title: The maintained discharge of rat retinal ganglion cells.
abstract: Action potentials were recorded from rat retinal ganglion cell fibers in the presence of a uniform field, and the maintained discharge pattern was characterized. Spike trains recorded under ketaminexylazine. The majority of cells had multimodal interval distributions, with the first peak in the range of 25.00.97). Both ON and OFF cells show serial correlations between adjacent interspike intervals, while ON cells also showed second-order correlations. Cells with multimodal interval distribution showed a strong peak at high frequencies in the power spectra in the range of 28.9-41.4 Hz. Oscillations were present under both anesthetic conditions and persisted in the dark at a slightly lower frequency, implying that the oscillations are generated independent of any light stimulus but can be modulated by light level. The oscillation frequency varied slightly between cells of the same type and in the same eye, suggesting that multiple oscillatory generating mechanisms exist within the retina. Cells with high-frequency oscillations were described well by an integrate-and-fire model with the input consisting of Gaussian noise plus a sinusoid where the phase was jittered randomly to account for the bandwidth present in the oscillations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA. dfreeman@bu.edu
authors.forename: Daniel K
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Freeman
authors.forename: Walter F
authors.initials: WF
authors.lastname: Heine
authors.forename: Christopher L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Passaglia
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000187:drug effects / Q000528:radiation effects; D000700:Analgesics / Q000494:pharmacology; D000778:Anesthetics, Dissociative / Q000494:pharmacology; D000818:Animals; D007649:Ketamine / Q000494:pharmacology; D008027:Light; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009991:Oscillometry; D051381:Rats; D011914:Rats, Inbred BN; D011930:Reaction Time; D012165:Retinal Ganglion Cells / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology* / Q000528:radiation effects; D014991:Xylazine / Q000494:pharmacology
chemical_list: D000700:Analgesics; D000778:Anesthetics, Dissociative; D014991:Xylazine; D007649:Ketamine