Retinal Ganglion Cells

Abstract

Ganglion cells typically make up the innermost layer of the vertebrate retina. They are the only cells with axons that leave the eye. These axons form the optic nerve. Ganglion cell dendrites ramify in the inner nuclear layer, where they are postsynaptic to bipolar cells, which provide a direct input pathway from the outer plexiform layer, and to amacrine cells, which mediate spatially lateral interactions. Via these inputs, each ganglion cell is linked to a roughly circular patch of photoreceptors that subtend a view of Space ranging from minutes to degrees of solid angle; the actual size of the field of view depends upon retinal position and animal species. The region in space in which a visual stimulus can substantively influence the firing of a particular ganglion cell is referred to as its receptive field. The network of synaptically linked neurons that define a ganglion cell’s receptive field leads to excitatory and inhibitory interactions that are the basis of the cell’s being more responsive to certain visual Stimuli than to others.