Summary
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1.
Some visual interneurons in the medulla of the locust (Locusta migratoria) optic lobe, give highly phasic responses, typically a single spike, to any suprathreshold intensity change. Although forming a distinctive class, these cells vary in receptive field area and their relative sensitivities to intensity increments and decrements.
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2.
The timing of responses is quite precise. Typically the standard deviation of the spike latency is 2 ms. The responses to intensity increments and decrements are very similar in waveform and latency, so the cells not signal stimulus polarity. Spike timing depends upon stimulus contrast, below contrasts of about 0.4.
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Spiking responses adapt so that cells do not give a steady state response to stimulus frequencies of over 10 Hz. Graded potential responses to sinusoidal flicker exhibit a powerful second harmonic component.
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4.
A description is given of a simple way in which the responses of this group of cells can be obtained by linear and nonlinear operations on the photoreceptor input.
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Osorio, D. The temporal properties of non-linear, transient cells in the locust medulla. J. Comp. Physiol. 161, 431–440 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00603968
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00603968