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In vivo evidence that retinal bipolar cells generate spikes modulated by light

Nature Neuroscience volume 14, pages 951–952 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

Retinal bipolar cells have been assumed to generate purely graded responses to light. To test this idea we imaged the presynaptic calcium transient in live zebrafish. We found that ON, OFF, transient and sustained bipolar cells are all capable of generating fast 'all-or-none' calcium transients modulated by visual stimulation.

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Figure 1: Imaging fast presynaptic calcium transients in bipolar cells in vivo.
Figure 2: Bipolar cells responded to light with both graded signals and spikes.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all of the members of the Lagnado laboratory for discussions that contributed to this work. We also thank the Wellcome Trust for funding (grant 083220).

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Author notes

  1. Elena Dreosti and Federico Esposti: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Hills Road, Cambridge, UK.,

    Elena Dreosti, Federico Esposti, Tom Baden & Leon Lagnado

Authors
  1. Elena Dreosti
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  2. Federico Esposti
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  3. Tom Baden
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  4. Leon Lagnado
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Contributions

Experiments were designed by E.D., F.E. and L.L. and performed by E.D., F.E. and L.L. Analysis was carried out by E.D., F.E. and L.L. The manuscript was written by F.E., T.B. and L.L.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Leon Lagnado.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figure 1, Supplementary Methods and Algorithm (PDF 234 kb)

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Dreosti, E., Esposti, F., Baden, T. et al. In vivo evidence that retinal bipolar cells generate spikes modulated by light. Nat Neurosci 14, 951–952 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2841

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