Creation Moment 10/2/2024 - Synaptic complexities of vision

I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: Psalm 139:14

"An individual retinal cell can output more than one unique signal, according to a Northwestern Medicine study published in Nature Communications, a finding that sheds new light on the complexities of how vision functions in mammals.

Bipolar cells in the retina are responsible for transmitting signals between photoreceptors in the eye and ganglion cells, a type of neuron which sends light-activated signals to the rest of the brain for processing.

Because neurons can have hundreds or even thousands of synapses, the findings not only upend conventional theories about visual processing but also highlight how intricate and complex visual signaling can be.

"Even some of the very smallest neurons in the entire nervous system can respond differently to different synapses," Schwartz said.
"We thought this would end up being relatively simple: That the

ganglion cells get inputs from different cells. This is the classic circuit way to describe how cells have a different response, because their wiring diagram is different," Schwartz said. "But what was amazing was that that was not the case. There are differences inside very small neurons at the level of synapses, not at the level of which neurons they're actually connected to. That was surprising." 

MedicalXpress