Croner L J, Purpura K, Kaplan E
Laboratory of Biophysics, Rockefeller University, New York, NY 10021.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1993 Sep 1;90(17):8128-30. doi: 10.1073/pnas.90.17.8128.
The signal encoded by a sensory neuron is usually characterized as the cell's average response to repeated presentations of a stimulus. However, each stimulus presentation elicits a slightly different response. This response variability may obscure the signal represented by neural activity, but it might also be an important aspect of a neuron's message and in some instances may even serve useful function. Here we present evidence that response variability (noise) in primate retinal ganglion cells at photopic light levels is (i) independent of the amplitude of either the stimulus or the response and is therefore additive, (ii) independent of receptive field size and retinal eccentricity, and (iii) similar for all primate ganglion cells. Our results show that the primate retina maintains a uniform noise level across the entire visual field and suggest that the noise originates within the ganglion cells themselves.
感觉神经元编码的信号通常被表征为细胞对重复呈现的刺激的平均反应。然而,每次刺激呈现都会引发略有不同的反应。这种反应变异性可能会掩盖神经活动所代表的信号,但它也可能是神经元信息的一个重要方面,在某些情况下甚至可能发挥有用的功能。在这里,我们提供证据表明,在明视觉光水平下,灵长类视网膜神经节细胞的反应变异性(噪声):(i)与刺激或反应的幅度无关,因此是相加性的;(ii)与感受野大小和视网膜偏心度无关;(iii)在所有灵长类神经节细胞中相似。我们的结果表明,灵长类视网膜在整个视野中保持均匀的噪声水平,并表明噪声起源于神经节细胞本身。