Encoding of temporal information in the retina

描述（由申请人提供）：视网膜具有收集撞击在眼睛上的光并将该信息以有用的方式传输到大脑的艰巨任务。本研究的目的是探索视网膜如何翻译或编码随时间变化的视觉信息。动机假设是视网膜使用一种称为预测编码的高效方法来实现这一目标。我们计划使用蝾螈视网膜的电生理记录来验证这一假设。本研究将通过以下方式解决时变视觉输入的视网膜编码：1）确定神经节细胞棘波活动反映视觉刺激中精确时间相关性的程度，2）确定在视网膜电路中形成这种预测的位置，以及3）将这些实验结果转化为视网膜如何编码视觉信息的计算模型。这些实验将扩展我们对视网膜时间信息处理的认识。这些结果将与其他系统相关，并为理解神经元如何在其尖峰输出中表示时变信息提供了一个框架。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The retina has the monumental task of collecting light that impinges on the eye and transmitting this information in a useful way to the brain. The goal of this study is to explore how the retina translates or encodes time-varying visual information. The motivating hypothesis is that the retina uses a highly efficient method, called predictive encoding, to accomplish this goal. We plan to test this hypothesis using electrophysiological recordings from the salamander retina. This research we will address retinal encoding of time-varying visual inputs by: 1) Determining the extent to which ganglion cell spike activity reflects precise temporal correlations in the visual stimulus, 2) Determining where in the retinal circuitry this prediction is formed, and 3) Incorporating these experimental results into a computational model of how the retinal encodes visual information. The proposed experiments will extend our knowledge of temporal information processing in the retina. These results will be relevant to other systems and provide a framework for understanding how neurons represent time-varying information in their spike output.