Temporal and Spatial Properties of the Retinal Ganglion Cells' Response to Natural Stimuli Described by Treves-Rolls Sparsity

To investigate the temporal and spatial properties of the retinal ganglion cells' activities in response to natural stimuli, "sparsity" index was applied to analyze the response characteristics of chicken retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in exposure to checker-board flickering and natural movies (grayscale video-recording) over lifetime and across the population. The statistical results show that the lifetime sparseness of the single cell activity and the population sparseness of the ensemble activities are both more profound for the neuronal responses evoked by natural stimuli as compared to that elicited by checker-board flickering, while the mean firing rates in response to both kinds of stimuli were comparable.