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Resolving single cone inputs to visual receptive fields

Abstract

With the current techniques available for mapping receptive fields, it is impossible to resolve the contribution of single cone photoreceptors to the response of central visual neurons. Using adaptive optics to correct for ocular aberrations, we delivered micron-scale spots of light to the receptive field centers of neurons in the macaque lateral geniculate nucleus. Parvocellular LGN neurons mapped in this manner responded with high reliability to stimulation of single cones.

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Figure 1: Localizing cone fields of LGN neurons.
Figure 2: Parvocellular LGN activity varies with stimulus position and cone type.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Q. Yang, D.W. Arathorn and M. Feusner for help with software development, and D. Williams and D. Copenhagen for insightful manuscript comments. This work was supported by National Eye Institute grants EY10217 (J.C.H.), EY014375 (A.R.) and EY02162 (Beckman Vision Center). Support was also received from the National Science Foundation, through grant IIS-0712852 (L.C.S.), the Center for Adaptive Optics cooperative agreement AST-9876783, managed by University of California Santa Cruz, and Research to Prevent Blindness. The California Regional Primate Research Center is supported by US National Institutes of Health Base Grant RR00169.

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Correspondence to Lawrence C Sincich.

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Competing interests

Austin Roorda has a patent on the adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope used in this study (Method and apparatus for using adaptive optics in a scanning laser ophthalmoscope, United States patent 7,118,216). The patent is assigned to the University of Rochester and the University of Houston, and is currently licensed to Optos PLC. Optos is currently working to commercialize a system for clinical imaging applications. To date, Austin Roorda has collected no royalties from this license.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Figures 1, 2 and Supplementary Methods (PDF 115 kb)

Supplementary Video 1

Manual localization of receptive field. (WMV 10771 kb)

Supplementary Video 2

Cone stimulation with stabilized imaging. (WMV 9669 kb)

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Sincich, L., Zhang, Y., Tiruveedhula, P. et al. Resolving single cone inputs to visual receptive fields. Nat Neurosci 12, 967–969 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2352

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