Chichilnisky Lab
Systems Neurobiology and Sloan-Swartz Center
The Salk Institute

Eric S. Frechette

The Salk Institute, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037-1099 (858) 455-7933 eric [at] salk.edu

Motion Readout From Populations of Retinal Ganglion Cells

Although there are good methods for motion readout from pixels in images, no such methods have been applied to the output of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). The RGC representation, in the form of spike trains, is more complex. The goal of this project is to implement novel motion readout algorithms and examine their performance, given the responses of real RGCs to moving stimuli.

Retinal Limitations on Motion Readout

There are four main constraints that the retina places on the downstream visual system: sparse time sampling, discrete spatial sampling, noise, and nonlinearities. The goal of this project is to determine how robust motion readout is to these retinal challenges.

Color Tuning of Motion Readout

Some anatomical, physiological, and lesioning evidence argues that the detection of motion by the visual system is largely color-blind, perhaps even monochromatic. However, other psychophysical experiments have revealed that the tuning of motion sensitivity is obliquely ellipsoidal in color space, that is, not agnostic to color. The goal of this project is to examine the color tuning of motion read out from the retina.