Data from: Spike-triggered covariance analysis reveals phenomenological diversity of contrast adaptation in the retina

When visual contrast changes, retinal ganglion cells adapt by adjusting
their sensitivity as well as their temporal filtering characteristics. The
latter has classically been described by contrast-induced gain changes
that depend on temporal frequency. Here, we explored a new perspective on
contrast-induced changes in temporal filtering by using spike-triggered
covariance analysis to extract multiple parallel temporal filters for
individual ganglion cells. Based on multielectrode-array recordings from
ganglion cells in the isolated salamander retina, we found that contrast
adaptation of temporal filtering can largely be captured by
contrast-invariant sets of filters with contrast-dependent weights.
Moreover, differences among the ganglion cells in the filter sets and
their contrast-dependent contributions allowed us to phenomenologically
distinguish three types of filter changes. The first type is characterized
by newly emerging features at higher contrast, which can be reproduced by
computational models that contain response-triggered gain-control
mechanisms. The second type follows from stronger adaptation in the Off
pathway as compared to the On pathway in On-Off-type ganglion cells.
Finally, we found that, in a subset of neurons, contrast-induced filter
changes are governed by particularly strong spike-timing dynamics, in
particular by pronounced stimulus-dependent latency shifts that can be
observed in these cells. Together, our results show that the contrast
dependence of temporal filtering in retinal ganglion cells has a
multifaceted phenomenology and that a multi-filter analysis can provide a
useful basis for capturing the underlying signal-processing dynamics.