Modulation of horizontal cell coupling in the vertebrate retina

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The retina is a thin sheet of nerve cells at the back of the eye that converts the light of the visual world into a signal interpretable by the brain. Photoreceptors are the light-sensitive nerve cells of the retina and make connections (synapses) with bipolar cells and horizontal cells (HCs). Bipolar cells make synapses with amacrine cells and ganglion cells, the latter giving rise to processes (axons) that project to the brain as the optic nerve. At the level of the first synapse of the visual system, HCs enhance visual acuity by emphasizing differences in the visual scene. This is economical: the absolute intensity need not be encoded for every point in visual space, only the difference between a point in visual space (called the centre) and the background (called the surround).