RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Functional Asymmetries between Central and Peripheral Retinal Ganglion Cells in a Diurnal Rodent JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 277814 DO 10.1101/277814 A1 María-José Escobar A1 Mónica Otero A1 César Reyes A1 Rubén Herzog A1 Joaquin Araya A1 Cristóbal Ibaceta A1 Adrián G. Palacios YR 2018 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/06/277814.abstract AB The segregated properties of the visual system processing central or peripheral regions of the visual field have been widely studied in the visual cortex and the LGN, but rarely reported in retina. The retina performs complex computational strategies to extract spatial-temporal features that are in coherence with animal behavior and survival. Even if a big effort has been done to functionally characterize different retinal ganglion cell (RGC) types, a clear account of the particular functionality of central and peripheral cells is still missing. Here, using electrophysiological data obtained with a 256-MEA recording system on female diurnal rodent retinas (Octodon degus), we evidenced that peripheral RGCs have larger receptive fields, more sustained, faster and shorter temporal responses and sensitive to higher temporal frequencies with a broader frequency bandwidth than the center. Additionally, we also compared the asymmetries between ON and OFF cell populations present in each region, reporting that these asymmetries are dependent on the eccentricity. Finally, the presence of the asymmetries here reported emphasizes even more the complexity of computational strategies performed by the retina, which could serve as inspiration for the development of artificial visual systems.