Fig. 1.

Changing response timescales with spot size in retina and LGN. A: peristimulus time histograms (PSTHs) for the response of an example LGN neuron (white) and its associated RGC input (gray) to repeated presentations of a temporally modulated spot. Responses to the smallest spot size (1) were relatively slow and unmodulated over time, but the features of the PSTH became sharper and sparser as spot size was increased (2–5). B: we estimated the response timescale from the autocorrelation of each PSTH (see methods), demonstrating a clear trend in this example neuron to finer response timescales as spot size is increased. The trends in the RGC and LGN neuron closely followed one another. The size of the spot is normalized relative to the LGN neuron's measured center size, with unity corresponding to a spot that just covers the center. C: distribution of response timescales across all neurons in the study (n = 19) measured for the spot size matching each neuron's receptive field center (RF center) compared with the maximum spot size used for that neuron (Max). D: comparisons of the timescales of RGC and LGN neurons closely match. Each point represents the response timescales measured for each spot size (retina vs. LGN), normalized by each neuron's average timescale across spot size.