title: Retinal processing: smaller babies thrown out with bathwater.
abstract: Rod bipolar cells in the mammalian retina receive synaptic input from many noisy rod photoreceptors. When photons are scarce, linear addition of inputs would swamp signals with noise. A nonlinearity at the synapse optimizes the signal to noise ratio.
authors.affiliation: Section of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, Division of Biological Sciences, UC Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wilson
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004594:Electrophysiology; D008959:Models, Neurological; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012160:Retina / Q000502:physiology*; D017948:Retinal Rod Photoreceptor Cells / Q000502:physiology; D013569:Synapses / Q000502:physiology