STEADY DISCHARGES OF MACAQUE RETINAL GANGLION-CELLS

Steady discharges were collected from ganglion cells of the magnocellu lar (MC) and parvocellular (PC) pathways of the macaque while their re ceptive fields were uniformly illuminated with a 4.7-deg steady yellow light of photopic illuminance. The mean rates, coefficients of variat ion, interval distributions, serial correlation coefficients, and powe r spectra of these discharges were determined. The results presented p ermit one to estimate the noise power in the discharges of macaque gan glion cells and hence determine how visual signals of different amplit udes will be affected by the noise resident in their discharges.Althou gh there was some small serial correlation in the discharges of both M C- and PC-pathway cells, their discharges can be considered to result from renewal processes with reasonable accuracy. As with the discharge s of cat ganglion cells, macaque ganglion cell discharges can be consi dered to have approximately gamma-distributed intervals. Steady discha rges of MC- and PC-pathway cells show considerable overlap in their st atistics, although small but significant differences are present.