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Separate blue and green cone networks in the mammalian retina

Nature Neuroscience volume 7, pages 751–756 (2004)Cite this article

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Abstract

The distinct absorbance spectra of the cone photopigments form the basis of color vision, but ultrastructural and physiological evidence shows that mammalian cones are electrically coupled. Coupling between cones of the same spectral type should average voltage noise in adjacent photoreceptors and improve the ability to resolve low-contrast spatial patterns. However, indiscriminate coupling between spectral types could compromise color vision by smearing chromatic information across channels. Here we show, by measuring the junctional conductance between green-green and blue-green cone pairs in slices from the dichromatic ground-squirrel retina, that green-green cone pairs are routinely coupled with an average conductance of 220 pS, whereas coupling is undetectable in blue-green cone pairs. Together with a lack of tracer coupling and the selective localization of connexin proteins, our results show that signals in blue and green cones are processed separately in the photoreceptor layer.

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Figure 1: Identification of blue cones in a retinal slice.
Figure 2: Junctional conductance between pairs of green-green and blue-green cones.
Figure 3: Neurobiotin diffusion among green but not blue cones.
Figure 4: Connexin36 immunolabeling at the cone pedicles.
Figure 5: Absence of coupling between blue and green cones in the dark-adapted retina.

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  • 22 June 2004

    added erratum PDF to AOP PDF, placed footnote in article, corrected online details added to corrected v7/n7 issue PDF

Notes

  1. *Note: In the version of this article initially published online, the page range for reference 48 was listed incorrectly in the reference list. The correct page range should be 745—750. This error has been corrected for the HTML and print versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. McGinnis for the anti-recoverin antibody; and S. Massey and D. Schneeweis for critically reading the manuscript. This work was supported by the US National Institutes of Health (grant EY12141) and Research to Prevent Blindness.

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  1. Departments of Ophthalmology & Physiology, Northwestern University Medical School, 303 East Chicago Avenue, Tarry 5-715, Chicago, 60611, Illinois, USA

    Wei Li & Steven H DeVries

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Correspondence to Wei Li.

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Li, W., DeVries, S. Separate blue and green cone networks in the mammalian retina. Nat Neurosci 7, 751–756 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1275

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