# Unique physiological properties of novel ganglion cell types in primate retina

> **NIH NIH R01** · STANFORD UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $607,177

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
The overall objective of this research is to gain a deeper understanding of visual processing in
the macaque monkey retina, the most important animal model for understanding human vision,
and to leverage that knowledge to treat blindness. The goal of the proposed work is to
determine how four poorly understood retinal cell types contribute to visual processing in
primates. Many of the retinal amacrine and ganglion cell types that have been characterized in
non-primate retinas perform complex and specialized visual computations, extracting
information such as motion direction, object orientation, and object versus background motion
from visual inputs. Whether similar computations also occur in the primate retina is unclear,
because most physiological studies have focused on the role of only five of the ~20 output
pathways. We have identified four cell types in the macaque monkey retina that exhibit
intriguing differences from the five better-studied cell types in their visual response properties.
Our specific aims are to 1) determine how striking waves of activity in the network of A1
amacrine cells network shapes the light response properties of parasol ganglion cells, 2)
determine how intrinsic and circuit mechanisms shape the unusual spatial and temporal
response properties of broad thorny ganglion cells, and 3) determine how membrane and
receptive field properties allow ON- and OFF-type smooth monostratified ganglion cells to signal
distinct information to the brain from their parasol cell counterparts. At the conclusion of this
work, we expect to have a deeper understanding of the visual computations performed by the
primate retina and the neural mechanisms that underlie those computations. Further, this
project will shed much needed light on how retinal processing in primates, and by extension
humans, relates to that observed in rodents and other animal models.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10774264
- **Project number:** 5R01EY029247-06
- **Recipient organization:** STANFORD UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** EDUARDO CHICHILNISKY
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $607,177
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-30 → 2027-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10774264

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10774264, Unique physiological properties of novel ganglion cell types in primate retina (5R01EY029247-06). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-11 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10774264. Licensed CC0.

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