Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Adaptive mechanisms in sensory neurons are crucial to transmit information in different contexts. In the retina, it is assumed that their role is to normalize neuronal responses to input statistics like mean and variance. However, this role has mostly been characterized with simple, artificial stimuli, and remains unclear for natural stimuli. Here we show that during their response to natural scenes, adaptive mechanisms reshape the feature selectivity of ganglion cells, the retinal output. We recorded retinal ganglion cell responses to rapid sequences of natural images in mice. Including a bio-inspired adaptive mechanism in an artificial neural network model was necessary to predict cell responses to new sequences of natural images. This adaptive mechanism tuned specific cell types to selectively respond to homogeneous regions situated within cluttered visual surrounds, a feature suited for detecting threats. Adaptive mechanisms do not merely normalize responses but actively enable new feature selectivity in the early visual system.
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: Modeling myopia control at the crossroads of optics and retinal neurobiology, European Network for integrated TRAINing on Innovative Therapies for VISion RestoratiON, G4656594441, Studying sensory coding of complex naturalistic stimuli in the barrel cortex with a perturbative method and a machine learning approach, Nutrition and physical activity against age-related neurodegeneration in a primate, G5296751580, G5607072047, G615251666, G819187918, G8768106830
OpenAlex ID: W7214605691