Journal
CURRENT BIOLOGY
Volume 25, Issue 21, Pages 2763-2773Publisher
CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.09.018
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Funding
- National Eye Institute (NEI) [R00 EY018863, R01 EY023660]
- Research to Prevent Blindness Scientific Career Development Award
- Health Sciences Scholars Program summer research stipend
- NEI Vision Core [P30 EY007003]
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Retinal neurons exhibit sustained versus transient light responses, which are thought to encode low-and high-frequency stimuli, respectively. This dichotomy has been recognized since the earliest intracellular recordings from the 1960s, but the underlying mechanisms are not yet fully understood. We report that in the ganglion cell layer of rat retinas, all spiking amacrine interneurons with sustained ON photoresponses receive gap-junction input from intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs), recently discovered photoreceptors that specialize in prolonged irradiance detection. This input presumably allows ipRGCs to regulate the secretion of neuromodulators from these interneurons. We have identified three morphological varieties of such ipRGC-driven displaced amacrine cells: (1) monostratified cells with dendrites terminating exclusively in sublamina S5 of the inner plexiform layer, (2) bistratified cells with dendrites in both 81 and S5, and (3) polyaxonal cells with dendrites and axons stratifying in S5. Most of these amacrine cells are wide field, although some are medium field. The three classes respond to light differently, suggesting that they probably perform diverse functions. These results demonstrate that ipRGCs are a major source of tonic visual information within the retina and exert widespread intraretinal influence. They also add to recent evidence that ganglion cells signal not only to the brain.
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