Background

In the retina, the first receptive fields studied were the receptive fields of the ganglion cells. Kuffler (1953) was the first researcher to study these remarkable cells. A particular ganglion cell that receives input from the fovea might have a receptive field that corresponds to exactly the point you are looking at. A ganglion cell that receives input from the far periphery might have a receptive field that corresponds to a point in space just at the edge of your visual field, away from your point of central fixation.

In this illustration, you can try your hand at an experiment measuring the response of one cell from the eye, a ganglion cell (see Chapter 3). You will be able to move a dot around the screen to see how it changes the firing rate of the cell. Without being stimulated, cells have a background firing rate. Light presented to the area of the retina that the cell responds to, the receptive field, can both increase and decrease the firing rate of the cell. See if you can find a pattern to how the cell responds to the light. Note that the firing rate is always changing, so you need to look carefully for changes that are due to the stimulus.

Instructions

Full Screen Mode

To see the illustration in full screen, which is recommended, press the Full Screen button, which appears at the top of the page.

Illustration Tab

On the Illustration tab, you can stimulate a region of the retina and see the effect on the single cell you are recording from.

Settings

Below is a list of the ways that you can alter the model. The settings include the following:

Screen Area: the black area on the screen to the left is a screen that the eye of your animal is seeing. The receptive field of the cell you are recording from is responding to some part of this screen. Click on or touch the screen to move the dot around and see how the cell responds by looking at the graph to the right.
Excite Resp (+): if the firing rate goes above the horizontal blue line, the cell is said to be excited. You can place a green plus mark at that location by pressing this button.
Inhib Resp (+): if the firing rate goes below the horizontal blue line, the cell is said to be inhibited. You can place a red minus sign at that location by pressing this button.
Show Cell: after you have place enough marks on the screen, you can show the shape of this receptive field; the green shape is the excitatory area and the red shape indicates the inhibitory area.
Remove Last Mark: press to remove the last mark, and then sequentially the previous marks, if you added any marks by mistake.

Reset

Pressing this button restores the settings to their default values. It also gets you a new cell which might have a different receptive field.