| First Author | Hellmer CB | Year | 2021 |
| Journal | Cell Rep | Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 11 | Pages | 110106 |
| PubMed ID | 34910920 | Mgi Jnum | J:321540 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:6883829 | Doi | 10.1016/j.celrep.2021.110106 |
| Citation | Hellmer CB, et al. (2021) Cholinergic feedback to bipolar cells contributes to motion detection in the mouse retina. Cell Rep 37(11):110106 |
| abstractText | Retinal bipolar cells are second-order neurons that transmit basic features of the visual scene to postsynaptic partners. However, their contribution to motion detection has not been fully appreciated. Here, we demonstrate that cholinergic feedback from starburst amacrine cells (SACs) to certain presynaptic bipolar cells via alpha-7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (alpha7-nAChRs) promotes direction-selective signaling. Patch clamp recordings reveal that distinct bipolar cell types making synapses at proximal SAC dendrites also express alpha7-nAChRs, producing directionally skewed excitatory inputs. Asymmetric SAC excitation contributes to motion detection in On-Off direction-selective ganglion cells (On-Off DSGCs), predicted by computational modeling of SAC dendrites and supported by patch clamp recordings from On-Off DSGCs when bipolar cell alpha7-nAChRs is eliminated pharmacologically or by conditional knockout. Altogether, these results show that cholinergic feedback to bipolar cells enhances direction-selective signaling in postsynaptic SACs and DSGCs, illustrating how bipolar cells provide a scaffold for postsynaptic microcircuits to cooperatively enhance retinal motion detection. |
