Abstract
Noise in the responses of cone photoreceptors sets a fundamental limit on visual sensitivity, yet the origin of noise in mammalian cones and its relation to behavioral sensitivity are poorly understood. Our work here on primate cones improves understanding of these issues in three ways. First, we found that cone noise was not dominated by spontaneous photopigment activation or by quantal fluctuations in photon absorption, but was instead dominated by other sources, namely channel noise and fluctuations in cyclic GMP. Second, adaptation in cones, unlike that in rods, affected signal and noise differently. This difference helps to explain why thresholds for rod- and cone-mediated signals have different dependencies on background light level. Third, past estimates of noise in mammalian cones are too high to explain behavioral sensitivity. Our measurements indicate a lower level of cone noise and therefore help to reconcile physiological and behavioral estimates of cone noise and sensitivity.
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Acknowledgements
We thank C. Asbury, F. Dunn, G. Horwitz and R. Sinha for helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper, and M. Cafaro and P. Newman for excellent technical assistance. Color scales were developed and made freely available for Matlab by M. Niccoli. Support was provided by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (F.R.) and the National Eye Institute of the US National Institutes of Health (R01EY11850 to F.R.). Retinas were obtained from the Washington National Primate Research Center at the University of Washington, US National Institutes of Health grant RR00166, and from the National Center for Research Resources and the Office of Research Infrastructure Programs of the National Institutes of Health through grant Number P51 OD 010425.
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J.M.A. and F.R. conducted experiments, performed analyses and wrote the manuscript.
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Angueyra, J., Rieke, F. Origin and effect of phototransduction noise in primate cone photoreceptors. Nat Neurosci 16, 1692–1700 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3534
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3534
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