Abstract
Across species, specialized retinal circuits allow animals to extract visual information from their environments. How retinal circuits extract relevant visual information is a major area of inquiry. In the mouse retina, cone photoreceptors possess a gradient of opsin expression leading to uneven detection of colors across visual space. However, at the output of the retina, ganglion cells' color preferences deviate from this gradient, suggesting that circuits in the retina may alter the color information before sending it to the brain. We explored how circuits in the retina shape chromatic information, focusing on the retina's interneurons, amacrine cells and bipolar cells. We found that inhibitory amacrine cells rebalance color preferences, leading to diverse color selectivity throughout retinal space. Since amacrine cells vary widely across species, these cells are poised to tune the chromatic information sent to the brain to each species' environmental niche.
Funding: Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG; BE5601/2-1; SPP 2041; BE5601/4-1,2; EU42/9-1,2), the German Ministry of Education and Research (Bernstein Award 01GQ1601 to PB; BCCN 01GQ1002 to KF), the Medical Faculty/U Tübingen (fortüne to AV), and the Max Planck Society (M.FE.A.KYBE0004 to KF).