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Detection and prediction of periodic patterns by the retina

Nature Neuroscience volume 10, pages 552–554 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

A fundamental task of the brain is detecting patterns in the environment that enable predictions about the future. Here, we show that the salamander and mouse retinas can recognize a wide class of periodic temporal patterns, such that a subset of ganglion cells fire strongly and specifically in response to a violation of the periodicity. This sophisticated retinal processing may provide a substrate for hierarchical pattern detection in subsequent circuits.

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Figure 1: Ganglion cell responses to omitted flashes.
Figure 2: The omitted stimulus response is predictive.
Figure 3: More complex patterns.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Thomas for help with experiments, and A. Fairhall and D. Warland for useful discussions. The work was supported by the US National Eye Institute (R01 EY14196) and by the E. Mathilda Ziegler Foundation for the Blind.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, 08544, New Jersey, USA

    Greg Schwartz, David Shrom & Michael J Berry II

  2. Sussex Centre for Neuroscience, School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9Q6, UK

    Rob Harris

Authors
  1. Greg Schwartz
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  2. Rob Harris
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Correspondence to Michael J Berry II.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Fig. 1

Changes in the number of flashes in the sequence. (PDF 103 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 2

OSR strength for different cell types. (PDF 184 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 3

OSR strength versus ON-OFF index. (PDF 176 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 4

Robustness to changes in the stimulus pattern. (PDF 276 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 5

Spatio-temporal patterns. (PDF 127 kb)

Supplementary Methods (PDF 75 kb)

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Schwartz, G., Harris, R., Shrom, D. et al. Detection and prediction of periodic patterns by the retina. Nat Neurosci 10, 552–554 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1887

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