On-Off coding is latent in vertebrate visual circuits

Summary

Vertebrate visual systems encode stimulus changes as On and Off signals through a distributed mechanism rather than a fixed early circuit. Bipolar cells frequently co-express receptor systems of opposing polarity and can generate mixed responses that are normally suppressed by inhibitory circuitry. Using zebrafish models validated in mice, this work shows that polarity segregation is a dynamic computation regulated by inhibition across multiple processing stages.