Divergence of Retinal Information to the Brain

The mammalian retina conveys the vast majority of information about visual stimuli to two brain regions: the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus and the superior colliculus. However, the degree to which retinal ganglion cells send similar or distinct information to these two areas remains unclear. To resolve this ambiguity, Erika Ellis and colleagues used retrograde-labeling techniques to study retinal ganglion cells labeled from the lateral geniculate nucleus, the superior colliculus, or both. In this podcast, Editor-in-Chief Bill Yates (University of Pittsburgh), and content experts Greg Schwartz (Northwestern University) and Samuel Solomon (University College London) join authors Erika Ellis (Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami) and Gabe Murphy (Allen Institute for Brain Science) in an engaging discussion about strategies to retrogradely label cells in an unbiased, robust, and specific way and several functional differences in the populations of retinal ganglion cells labeled from the two major retinorecipient brains areas. What do these results tell us about the flow of visual information between these areas, and what could these results tells us about human vision in health or disease? Listen and find out.

Shared and distinct retinal input to the mouse superior colliculus and dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus
Erika M. Ellis, Gregory Gauvain, Benjamin Sivyer, Gabe J. Murphy
Journal of Neurophysiology, published online May 11, 2016. DOI: 10.1152/jn.00227.2016.