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Fixational eye movements alter the number and timing of spikes transmitted from the retina to the brain, but whether these changes enhance or degrade the retinal signal is unclear. To quantify this, we developed a Bayesian method for reconstructing natural images from the recorded spikes of hundreds of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in the macaque retina (male), combining a likelihood model for RGC light responses with the natural image prior implicitly embedded in an artificial neural network optimized for denoising. The method matched or surpassed the performance of previous reconstruction algorithms, and provides an interpretable framework for characterizing the retinal signal. Reconstructions were improved with artificial stimulus jitter that emulated fixational eye movements, even when the eye movement trajectory was assumed to be unknown and had to be inferred from retinal spikes. Reconstructions were degraded by small artificial perturbations of spike times, revealing more precise temporal encoding than suggested by previous studies. Finally, reconstructions were substantially degraded when derived from a model that ignored cell-to-cell interactions, indicating the importance of stimulus-evoked correlations. Thus, fixational eye movements enhance the precision of the retinal representation. The visual signals transmitted by the retina to the brain are affected by random drift in eye position, but the impact of this on visual capabilities is not clear. Here, the authors show that the decoding of images from evoked spike trains recorded in the macaque retina improves with fixational eye movements, even when the eye position is unknown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural emulsifiers, particularly those extracted from plants, are highly wanted by food industry to meet consumers demand for clean label food and beverage products. The potential utilization of soy lecithin as an emulsifier in model coffee creamer was investigated in this study. The model oil-in-water (O/W) emulsions consisted of 10 wt% medium chain triglyceride were stabilized using either 1% or 5% soy lecithin (pH 7.0). The O/W emulsions were of whitish milky color (L* = 88-92) and were able to whiten black coffee solutions (L* from 5.5 for black coffee to 44-56 for white coffees). Model O/W emulsions with smaller mean droplet diameters (0.11 to 1.09 μm), higher surface potentials (ζ = −62 to −72 mV), and better stabilities in hot coffee were fabricated using higher lecithin levels because there was more emulsifier to coat the oil droplet surfaces. Alteration of the electrostatic interactions in the model O/W emulsions (5% lecithin) by pH adjustment or calcium addition led to droplet aggregation under certain conditions, which was attributed to charge reduction by protonation of lecithin head groups and electrostatic screening by counter-ion accumulation and ion-binding. In particular, phase separation of the model creamer occurred at pH value around 4.5 when the system was acidified at a slow rate. Overall, this study suggests that lecithin-stabilized O/W emulsions may become unstable in coffee solutions with high acidity or calcium levels. The information obtained from this study provides insights on the use of plant-based emulsifiers in commercial food and beverage systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patients with retinal degeneration lose sight due to the gradual demise of photoreceptors. Electrical stimulation of surviving retinal neurons provides an alternative route for the delivery of visual information. We demonstrate that subretinal implants with 70-μm-wide photovoltaic pixels provide highly localized stimulation of retinal neurons in rats. The electrical receptive fields recorded in retinal ganglion cells were similar in size to the natural visual receptive fields. Similarly to normal vision, the retinal response to prosthetic stimulation exhibited flicker fusion at high frequencies, adaptation to static images and nonlinear spatial summation. In rats with retinal degeneration, these photovoltaic arrays elicited retinal responses with a spatial resolution of 64 ± 11 μm, corresponding to half of the normal visual acuity in healthy rats. The ease of implantation of these wireless and modular arrays, combined with their high resolution, opens the door to the functional restoration of sight in patients blinded by retinal degeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To achieve its precise neural connectivity, the developing mammalian nervous system undergoes extensive activity-dependent synapse remodelling. Recently, microglial cells have been shown to be responsible for a portion of synaptic pruning, but the remaining mechanisms remain unknown. Here we report a new role for astrocytes in actively engulfing central nervous system synapses. This process helps to mediate synapse elimination, requires the MEGF10 and MERTK phagocytic pathways, and is strongly dependent on neuronal activity. Developing mice deficient in both astrocyte pathways fail to refine their retinogeniculate connections normally and retain excess functional synapses. Finally, we show that in the adult mouse brain, astrocytes continuously engulf both excitatory and inhibitory synapses. These studies reveal a novel role for astrocytes in mediating synapse elimination in the developing and adult brain, identify MEGF10 and MERTK as critical proteins in the synapse remodelling underlying neural circuit refinement, and have important implications for understanding learning and memory as well as neurological disease processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retinal degenerative diseases lead to blindness due to loss of the 'image capturing' photoreceptors, while neurons in the 'image-processing' inner retinal layers are relatively well preserved. Electronic retinal prostheses seek to restore sight by electrically stimulating the surviving neurons. Most implants are powered through inductive coils, requiring complex surgical methods to implant the coil-decoder-cable-array systems that deliver energy to stimulating electrodes via intraocular cables. We present a photovoltaic subretinal prosthesis, in which silicon photodiodes in each pixel receive power and data directly through pulsed near-infrared illumination and electrically stimulate neurons. Stimulation is produced in normal and degenerate rat retinas, with pulse durations of 0.5-4 ms, and threshold peak irradiances of 0.2-10 mW mm?2, two orders of magnitude below the ocular safety limit. Neural responses were elicited by illuminating a single 70 µm bipolar pixel, demonstrating the possibility of a fully integrated photovoltaic retinal prosthesis with high pixel density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional neural recording systems restrict behavioral experiments to a flat indoor environment compatible with the cable that tethers the subject to recording instruments. To overcome these constraints, we developed a wireless multi-channel system for recording neural signals from rats. The device takes up to 64 voltage signals from implanted electrodes, samples each at 20 kHz, time-division multiplexes them into one signal and transmits that output by radio frequency to a receiver up to 60 m away. The system introduces <4 μV of electrode-referred noise, comparable to wired recording systems, and outperforms existing rodent telemetry systems in channel count, weight and transmission range. This allows effective recording of brain signals in freely behaving animals. We report measurements of neural population activity taken outdoors and in tunnels. Neural firing in the visual cortex was relatively sparse, correlated even across large distances and was strongly influenced by locomotor activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand a neural circuit requires knowledge of its connectivity. Here we report measurements of functional connectivity between the input and ouput layers of the macaque retina at single-cell resolution and the implications of these for colour vision. Multi-electrode technology was used to record simultaneously from complete populations of the retinal ganglion cell types (midget, parasol and small bistratified) that transmit high-resolution visual signals to the brain. Fine-grained visual stimulation was used to identify the location, type and strength of the functional input of each cone photoreceptor to each ganglion cell. The populations of ON and OFF midget and parasol cells each sampled the complete population of long- and middle-wavelength-sensitive cones. However, only OFF midget cells frequently received strong input from short-wavelength-sensitive cones. ON and OFF midget cells showed a small non-random tendency to selectively sample from either long- or middle-wavelength-sensitive cones to a degree not explained by clumping in the cone mosaic. These measurements reveal computations in a neural circuit at the elementary resolution of individual neurons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small bistratified cells (SBCs) in the primate retina carry a major blue-yellow opponent signal to the brain. We found that SBCs also carry signals from rod photoreceptors, with the same sign as S cone input. SBCs exhibited robust responses under low scotopic conditions. Physiological and anatomical experiments indicated that this rod input arose from the AII amacrine cell–mediated rod pathway. Rod and cone signals were both present in SBCs at mesopic light levels. These findings have three implications. First, more retinal circuits may multiplex rod and cone signals than were previously thought to, efficiently exploiting the limited number of optic nerve fibers. Second, signals from AII amacrine cells may diverge to most or all of the ∼20 retinal ganglion cell types in the peripheral primate retina. Third, rod input to SBCs may be the substrate for behavioral biases toward perception of blue at mesopic light levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistical dependencies in the responses of sensory neurons govern both the amount of stimulus information conveyed and the means by which downstream neurons can extract it. Although a variety of measurements indicate the existence of such dependencies, their origin and importance for neural coding are poorly understood. Here we analyse the functional significance of correlated firing in a complete population of macaque parasol retinal ganglion cells using a model of multi-neuron spike responses. The model, with parameters fit directly to physiological data, simultaneously captures both the stimulus dependence and detailed spatio-temporal correlations in population responses, and provides two insights into the structure of the neural code. First, neural encoding at the population level is less noisy than one would expect from the variability of individual neurons: spike times are more precise, and can be predicted more accurately when the spiking of neighbouring neurons is taken into account. Second, correlations provide additional sensory information: optimal, model-based decoding that exploits the response correlation structure extracts 20% more information about the visual scene than decoding under the assumption of independence, and preserves 40% more visual information than optimal linear decoding. This model-based approach reveals the role of correlated activity in the retinal coding of visual stimuli, and provides a general framework for understanding the importance of correlated activity in populations of neurons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamic range of visual coding is extended by having separate ganglion cell types that respond to light increments and decrements. Although the primordial color vision system in mammals contains a well-characterized ganglion cell that responds to blue light increments (a blue On center cell), less is known about ganglion cells that respond to blue light decrements (blue Off center cells). We identified a regular mosaic of blue Off center ganglion cells in the ground squirrel. Contrary to the standard scheme, blue Off responses came from a blue On bipolar and inverting amacrine cell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]