Studies on Excitation and Inhibition in the Retina

Abstract

at the Rockefeller University, has conducted research on vision and the retina. His researches have extended into many and diverse branches of the field. and he has studied the retinas of various representatives of each of the three major phyla having well developed eyes-the arthropods. the vertebrates and the molluscs. These comparative studies have elucidated numerous fundamental principles of retinal physiology which. over the years. nave provided the foundations for many advances in the neurophysiology of vision. This collection of papers from Professor Hartline's laboratory, together with the specially written introductory sections. whose dual role it is to put into perspective the particularly significant aspects of the work and to survey the contributions to the subject from other laboratories. provides for research workers in the fields of neurophysiology, experimental psychology, vision, biophysics. and biomathematics. a full account-including much up-to-date material-of the development of the principles of retinal neurophysiology. The research work covered in this book emphasized and pioneered a vigorous combined mathematical-experimental approach to the study of neural networks. In the future this approach is likely to be utilised more and more in the analysis of complex neural networks. Following an historical foreword by Professor Hartline. the papers are arranged. more or less in chronological order, in five parts. The first three parts are on the activity of single optic nerve fibres in: (i) the compound lateral eye of the horseshoe crab. Limulus. (ii) the retinas of various cold blooded vertebrates. and (iii) the double retina of the eye of the scallop. The last two parts are on the inhibitory interaction in the lateral eye of Limulus: (iv) the steady state. and (v) the dynamics. The volume ends with Professor Hartline's recently published Nobel Lecture on the unitary analysis of retinal mechanisms of vision.