ArticlePloS one2016
The Physical Mechanism for Retinal Discrete Dark Noise: Thermal Activation or Cellular Ultraweak Photon Emission?
Article in PloS one, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- The concept of biophotonic signaling in the human body and brain: rationale, problems and directions.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2025Review
- A comprehensive data-driven model of cat primary visual cortex.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Are Brain-Computer Interfaces Feasible With Integrated Photonic Chips?Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Article
- An Experimental Investigation of Ultraweak Photon Emission from Adult Murine Neural Stem Cells.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- The mechanism of photon-like dark noise in rod photoreceptors.The Journal of general physiology · 2019Article
- Rejection of the biophoton hypothesis on the origin of photoreceptor dark noise.The Journal of general physiology · 2019Article
- Mechanisms of phosphenes in irradiated patients.Oncotarget · 2017Review
- Possible existence of optical communication channels in the brain.Scientific reports · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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Abstract
For several decades the physical mechanism underlying discrete dark noise of photoreceptors in the eye has remained highly controversial and poorly understood. It is known that the Arrhenius equation, which is based on the Boltzmann distribution for thermal activation, can model only a part (e.g. half of the activation energy) of the retinal dark noise experimentally observed for vertebrate rod and cone pigments. Using the Hinshelwood distribution instead of the Boltzmann distribution in the Arrhenius equation has been proposed as a solution to the problem. Here, we show that the using the Hinshelwood distribution does not solve the problem completely. As the discrete components of noise are indistinguishable in shape and duration from those produced by real photon induced photo-isomerization, the retinal discrete dark noise is most likely due to 'internal photons' inside cells and not due to thermal activation of visual pigments. Indeed, all living cells exhibit spontaneous ultraweak photon emission (UPE), mainly in the optical wavelength range, i.e., 350-700 nm. We show here that the retinal discrete dark noise has a similar rate as UPE and therefore dark noise is most likely due to spontaneous cellular UPE and not due to thermal activation.
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