Inhomogeneous Encoding of the Visual Field in the Mouse Retina

Stimulus characteristics of the mouse's visual field differ above and below the skyline. Here, we show for the first time that retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), the output neurons of the retina, gradually change their functional properties along the ventral-dorsal axis to allow better representation of the different stimulus characteristics. We conducted two-photon targeted recordings of transient-Offα-RGCs and found that they gradually became more sustained along the ventral-dorsal axis, revealing >5-fold-longer duration responses in the dorsal retina. Using voltage-clamp recordings, pharmacology, and genetic manipulation, we demonstrated that the primary rod pathway underlies this variance. Our findings challenge the current belief that RGCs of the same subtype exhibit the same light responses, regardless of retinal location, and suggest that networks underlying RGC responses may change with retinal location to enable optimized sampling of the visual image. Warwick et al. show that retinal ganglion cells of the same subtype display different light responses depending on retinal location, resulting from variations in their underlying circuits. They suggest that these variations enable optimized sampling of the visual image.