Retinal processing: smaller babies thrown out with bathwater.
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.
Wilson
Martin
M
Section of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, Division of Biological Sciences, UC Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
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