Spatially displaced excitation contributes to the encoding of interrupted motion by the retinal direction-selective circuit

Spatially distributed excitation and inhibition collectively shape a visual neuron’s receptive field (RF) properties. In the direction-selective circuit of the mammalian retina, the role of strong null-direction inhibition of On-Off direction-selective ganglion cells (ON-OFF DSGCs) on their direction selectivity is well-studied. However, how excitatory inputs influence the On-Off DSGC’s visual response is underexplored. Here, we report that On-Off DSGCs have a spatially displaced glutamatergic receptive field along their horizontal preferred-null motion axes. This displaced receptive field contributes to DSGC null-direction spiking during interrupted motion trajectories. Theoretical analyses indicate that population responses during interrupted motion may help populations of On-Off DSGCs signal the spatial location of moving objects in complex, naturalistic visual environments. Our study highlights that the direction-selective circuit exploits separate sets of mechanisms under different stimulus conditions, and these mechanisms may help encode multiple visual features.

Methods
Dataset has electrophysiology data files and calcium imaging data files. Whole-cell recordings are .abf files. These are associated with stimulus files.

Data files of spiking activity for moving bar and occluded bar stimuli are in .mat files. These .mat files include information about spike times and spike number to stimuli in different motion directions. 

Calcium imaging datasets include the fluoresence of the cell in the first column, and the background value in the second column. This data set also include a stimulus file, and a file containing the timing information of the voltage steps triggering the presentation of each stimulus.

README file called 'README Ding et al eLife' give more detail about individual files.