Applying Super-Resolution and Tomography Concepts to Identify Receptive Field Subunits in the Retina

Authors

Krüppel S, Khani MH, Schreyer HM, Sridhar S, Ramakrishna V, Zapp SJ, Mietsch M, Karamanlis D, Gollisch T

Journal

PLoS Computational Biology

Citation

PLoS Comput Biol. 2024 Sep 3;20(9):e1012370.

Abstract

Spatially nonlinear stimulus integration by retinal ganglion cells lies at the heart of various computations performed by the retina. It arises from the nonlinear transmission of signals that ganglion cells receive from bipolar cells, which thereby constitute functional subunits within a ganglion cell’s receptive field. Inferring these subunits from recorded ganglion cell activity promises a new avenue for studying the functional architecture of the retina. This calls for efficient methods, which leave sufficient experimental time to leverage the acquired knowledge for further investigating identified subunits. Here, we combine concepts from super-resolution microscopy and computed tomography and introduce super-resolved tomographic reconstruction (STR) as a technique to efficiently stimulate and locate receptive field subunits. Simulations demonstrate that this approach can reliably identify subunits across a wide range of model variations, and application in recordings of primate parasol ganglion cells validates the experimental feasibility. STR can potentially reveal comprehensive subunit layouts within only a few tens of minutes of recording time, making it ideal for online analysis and closed-loop investigations of receptive field substructure in retina recordings.

DOI

10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012370
 
Pubmed Link