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A color-coding amacrine cell may provide a blue-Off signal in a mammalian retina

Nature Neuroscience volume 15, pages 954–956 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Retinal amacrine cells are thought to lack chromatic or color-selective light responses and have only a minor role in color processing. We found that a type of mammalian (Ictidomys tridecemlineatus) amacrine cell selectively carries a blue-On signal, which is received from a blue or short wavelength–sensitive (S) cone On bipolar cell. This glycinergic inhibitory S-cone amacrine cell is ideally placed for driving blue-Off responses in downstream ganglion cells.

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Figure 1: SCA light responses.
Figure 2: SCA morphology.
Figure 3: SCA pharmacology.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Merriman and T. Rosenberg for editing and S. DeVries and B. Szmajda for critically reading the manuscript. This work was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Eye Institute (ZIA EY000508-01).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unit on Retinal Neurophysiology, National Eye Institute, US National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

    Shan Chen & Wei Li

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  1. Shan Chen
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  2. Wei Li
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Contributions

S.C. and W.L. conceived the project and designed the experiments. S.C. performed the experiments. S.C. and W.L. analyzed the data. W.L. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Wei Li.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Chen, S., Li, W. A color-coding amacrine cell may provide a blue-Off signal in a mammalian retina. Nat Neurosci 15, 954–956 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3128

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