Efficient coding of spatial information in the primate retina.
Abstract
Sensory neurons have been hypothesized to efficiently encode signals from the natural
environment subject to resource constraints. The predictions of this efficient coding
hypothesis regarding the spatial filtering properties of the visual system have been
found consistent with human perception, but they have not been compared directly with
neural responses. Here, we analyze the information that retinal ganglion cells transmit
to the brain about the spatial information in natural images subject to three resource
constraints: the number of retinal ganglion cells, their total response variances,
and their total synaptic strengths. We derive a model that optimizes the transmitted
information and compare it directly with measurements of complete functional connectivity
between cone photoreceptors and the four major types of ganglion cells in the primate
retina, obtained at single-cell resolution. We find that the ganglion cell population
exhibited 80% efficiency in transmitting spatial information relative to the model.
Both the retina and the model exhibited high redundancy (~30%) among ganglion cells
of the same cell type. A novel and unique prediction of efficient coding, the relationships
between projection patterns of individual cones to all ganglion cells, was consistent
with the observed projection patterns in the retina. These results indicate a high
level of efficiency with near-optimal redundancy in visual signaling by the retina.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Neural PathwaysRetinal Ganglion Cells
Retina
Animals
Macaca mulatta
Linear Models
Normal Distribution
Photic Stimulation
Space Perception
Visual Perception
Visual Fields
Algorithms
Models, Neurological
Retinal Cone Photoreceptor Cells
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/17863Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4036-12.2012Publication Info
Doi, Eizaburo; Gauthier, Jeffrey L; Field, Greg D; Shlens, Jonathon; Sher, Alexander;
Greschner, Martin; ... Simoncelli, Eero P (2012). Efficient coding of spatial information in the primate retina. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 32(46). pp. 16256-16264. 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4036-12.2012. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/17863.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Greg D. Field
Adjunct Associate Professor of Neurobiology
My laboratory studies how the retina processes visual scenes and transmits this information
to the brain. We use multi-electrode arrays to record the activity of hundreds of
retina neurons simultaneously in conjunction with transgenic mouse lines and chemogenetics
to manipulate neural circuit function. We are interested in three major areas. First,
we work to understand how neurons in the retina are functionally connected. Second
we are studying how light-adaptation and circadian rhythms a

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