Commentary: “Prdm13 regulates subtype specification of retinal amacrine interneurons and modulates visual sensitivity”

• Published in: Frontiers in cellular neuroscience Vol. 9; p. 424
• Main Authors: Bowrey, Hannah E., James, Morgan H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Frontiers Research Foundation 27.10.2015; Frontiers Media S.A
• Subjects: Acuity; amacrine cell; Amacrine cells; amacrine subtype specification; Conflicts of interest; Dopamine; Interneurons; Myopia; Neuroscience; Prdm13; Retina; Sampling; Sensitivity; visual function; Visual perception; amacrine cell; Prdm13; retina; subtype specification; aliasing; visual sensitivity
• ISSN: 1662-5102; 1662-5102
• DOI: 10.3389/fncel.2015.00424

[...]to fully understand the intricate diversity of retinal function, an understanding of these cells, and that of their subclasses, is critically important. Remarkably, in the majority of subjects, measurements of visual function in Prdm13−∕− mice were shifted higher than those of WT mice, leading the authors to speculate that spatial and temporal frequencies and contrast sensitivities were enhanced in Prdm13−∕− mice. If Type 2 amacrine cells are Prdm13+, then Prdm13+ cells may negatively affect direction sensitive ganglion cell function via Vglut3+ amacrine cells, and the loss of Prdm13+ cells may lead to higher OKR sensitivities for Prdm13−∕− mice. [...]the authors suggest that this specific subset of amacrine cells may negatively modulate visual sensitivities. [...]AII amacrine cells form the limit of scotopic acuity, and there is considerable agreement between the maximum scotopic acuity and the peak density of AII cells, in the primate (Mills and Massey, 1999). [...]as the sampling rate of the retina must be greater than twice the highest frequency component in the signal (the Nyquist frequency) for detection without aliasing (Geisler and Hamilton, 1986), it follows that the absence of all Prdm13+ amacrine cells, of which there are many, may considerably decrease the retinal neural sampling density, and therefore increase the likelihood of aliasing artifacts.