PSY 368 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Limulus, Lateral Inhibition, Amacrine Cell
4 Mar 2019
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Neural processing - the interaction of the signals of many neurons. More convergence (rods) results in greater sensitivity, and less convergence (cones) is associated with better detail vision. Lateral inhibition - inhibition that is transmitted across the retina. The limulus, or horseshoe crab, was used to demonstrate how lateral inhibition can affect the response of neurons in a circuit. It was chosen because the structure of its eye makes it possible to stimulate individual receptors. The eye is made up of hundreds of tiny structures called ommatidia, and each ommatidium has a small lens on the eye"s surface that is located directly over a single receptor. Each lens and receptor is very large relative to human receptors, so it is possible to illuminate and record from a single receptor without illuminating its neighboring receptors. They found that illumination of one receptor (a) caused a large receptor.
