ArticleCurrent biology : CB2014
Coincidence detection of single-photon responses in the inner retina at the sensitivity limit of vision.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Retinal Cx36 gap junctions in the inner and outer plexiform layers differentially control visual thresholds.iScience · 2026Article
- Divergent mechanisms of neural adaptation and instability in the mammalian retina.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Visual pigments underlie the sensitivity difference between day and night vision.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Signal Detection Theoretic Estimates of the Murine Absolute Visual Threshold Are Independent of Decision Bias.eNeuro · 2024Article
- Primate retina trades single-photon detection for high-fidelity contrast encoding.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Observers Efficiently Extract the Minimal and Maximal Element in Perceptual Magnitude Sets: Evidence for a Bipartite Format.Psychological science · 2024Article
- Article
- Dendro-somatic synaptic inputs to ganglion cells contradict receptive field and connectivity conventions in the mammalian retina.Current biology : CB · 2022Article
- A hybrid stochastic/deterministic model of single photon response and light adaptation in mouse rods.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2021Article
- A subset of broadly responsive Type III taste cells contribute to the detection of bitter, sweet and umami stimuli.PLoS genetics · 2020Article
- Connectomic analysis reveals an interneuron with an integral role in the retinal circuit for night vision.eLife · 2020Article
- Probing Computation in the Primate Visual System at Single-Cone Resolution.Annual review of neuroscience · 2019Review
- S-cone photoreceptors in the primate retina are functionally distinct from L and M cones.eLife · 2019Article
- Temporal resolution of single-photon responses in primate rod photoreceptors and limits imposed by cellular noise.Journal of neurophysiology · 2019Article
- Pathway-Specific Asymmetries between ON and OFF Visual Signals.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2018Article
- Parallel Processing of Rod and Cone Signals: Retinal Function and Human Perception.Annual review of vision science · 2018Review
- Flexible Neural Hardware Supports Dynamic Computations in Retina.Trends in neurosciences · 2018Review
- The discovery of the ability of rod photoreceptors to signal single photons.The Journal of general physiology · 2018Review
- Behavioural and physiological limits to vision in mammals.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Processing of single-photon responses in the mammalian On and Off retinal pathways at the sensitivity limit of vision.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Article
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Abstract
backgroundVision in starlight relies on our ability to detect single absorbed photons. Indeed, the sensitivity of dark-adapted vision approaches limits set by the quantal nature of light. This sensitivity requires neural mechanisms that selectively transmit quantal responses and suppress noise. Such mechanisms face an inevitable tradeoff because signal and noise cannot be perfectly separated, and rejecting noise also means rejecting signal.
resultsWe report measurements of single-photon responses in the output signals of the primate retina. We find that visual signals arising from a few absorbed photons are read out fundamentally differently by primate On and Off parasol ganglion cells, key retinal output neurons. Off parasol cells respond linearly to near-threshold flashes, retaining sensitivity to each absorbed photon but maintaining a high level of noise. On parasol cells respond nonlinearly due to thresholding of their excitatory synaptic inputs. This nonlinearity reduces neural noise but also limits information about single-photon absorptions.
conclusionsThe long-standing idea that information about each photon absorption is available for behavior at the sensitivity limit of vision is not universally true across retinal outputs. More generally, our work shows how a neural circuit balances the competing needs for sensitivity and noise rejection.
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