A chromatic feature detector in the retina signals visual context changes

Hoefling, Larissa, Szatko, Klaudia P, Behrens, Christian, Qiu, Yongrong, Klindt, David Alexander, Jessen, Zachary, Schwartz, Gregory S, Bethge, Matthias, Berens, Philipp, Franke, Katrin, Ecker, Alexander S, Euler, Thomas (December 2022) A chromatic feature detector in the retina signals visual context changes. bioRxiv. (Submitted)

PDF 2022.11.30.518492.full.pdf - Submitted Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (16MB)

Abstract

The retina transforms patterns of light into visual feature representations supporting behaviour. These representations are distributed across various types of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), whose spatial and temporal tuning properties have been studied extensively in many model organisms, including the mouse. However, it has been difficult to link the potentially nonlinear retinal transformations of natural visual inputs to specific ethological purposes. Here, we discover a nonlinear selectivity to chromatic contrast in an RGC type that allows the detection of changes in visual context. We trained a convolutional neural network (CNN) model on large-scale functional recordings of RGC responses to natural mouse movies, and then used this model to search in silico for stimuli that maximally excite distinct types of RGCs. This procedure predicted centre colour-opponency in transient Suppressed-by-Contrast RGCs (tSbC), a cell type whose function is being debated. We confirmed experimentally that these cells indeed responded very selectively to Green-OFF, UV-ON contrasts. This type of chromatic contrast was characteristic of transitions from ground to sky in the visual scene, as might be elicited by heador eye-movements across the horizon. Because tSbC cells performed best among all RGC types at reliably detecting these transitions, we suggest a role for this RGC type in providing contextual information (i.e. sky or ground) necessary for the selection of appropriate behavioural responses to other stimuli, such as looming objects. Our work showcases how a combination of experiments with natural stimuli and computational modelling allows discovering novel types of stimulus selectivity and identifying their potential ethological relevance.

Item Type:	Paper
Subjects:	organism description > animal behavior organs, tissues, organelles, cell types and functions organs, tissues, organelles, cell types and functions > tissues types and functions > retina organs, tissues, organelles, cell types and functions > tissues types and functions organism description > animal behavior > visual
CSHL Authors:	Klindt, David
Communities:	CSHL labs > Klindt lab
SWORD Depositor:	CSHL Elements
Depositing User:	CSHL Elements
Date:	1 December 2022
Date Deposited:	01 Apr 2024 16:10
Last Modified:	01 Apr 2024 16:10
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/41483

Actions (login required)

Administrator's edit/view item