Date of Award
Fall 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Neuroscience
First Advisor
Crair, Michael
Abstract
Sensory systems develop in the absence of external stimuli and are instead driven by spontaneous patterns of activity. In the mouse visual system, spontaneous retinal waves guide the self-organization of topographic projections between the eye and downstream visual structures before the onset of vision. Whether retinal waves also instruct the development of higher order visual responses in single cells downstream of the retina has been unclear. Retinal waves have been traditionally divided into stages based on their primary excitatory drive; however, the spatiotemporal characteristics of different types of retinal waves also vary stereotypically across stages. In the first half of this study, we investigate whether the spatiotemporal profile of late Stage II and early Stage III retinal waves contain instructive information for downstream visual system development. We report that a temporal-to-nasal propagation bias, mediated by a retinal circuit similar to the adult retinal direction-selective circuit, simulates optic flow due to forward motion and is critical for the development of direction-selective responses in downstream superior colliculus neurons. In the second half of this study, we further investigate the circuit underlying directional retinal waves and find that the cholinergic network is critical not only for directionally biased Stage III waves, but also for the emergence of Stage III waves more broadly. Together, our findings challenge the distinction between Stage II and Stage III waves based on underlying excitatory transmission and find that acetylcholine continues to play a critical role in Stage III waves to support the development of downstream visual motion detection.
Recommended Citation
Zhang, Kathy, "The role of acetylcholine in directional retinal waves and the development of visual motion" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1188.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1188
