Study Questions: Retinal Ganglion Cells

1. How do ganglion cells code information? How does a ganglion cell signal its excitatory and inhibitory responses, respectively?

2. What is the typical receptive field of a ganglion cell? Distinguish between the onset response and offset response. Briefly describe the response characteristics for each of the following ganglion cells: on-cell, off-cell, and on-off cell.

3. What is "lateral antagonism" (or lateral inhibition)? What function does this mechanism provide? What kinds of retinal cells possess this mechanism?

4. How does ganglion cell receptive field size vary with eccentricity? Is there only one size at a given eccentricity?

5. Are ganglion cells linear? Describe how one would go about testing whether retinal ganglion cells obey the various axioms of a linear, shift-invariant system.

6. Distinguish between a retinal image and a neural image. What aspects of visual images are emphasized by retinal ganglion cells to create their "neural image"?