Macaque retina simulator

Abstract The primate retina dissects visual scenes into multiple retinocortical streams. The most numerous retinal ganglion cell (GC) types, midget and parasol cells, are further divided into ON and OFF subtypes. These four GC populations have anatomical and physiological asymmetries, which are reflected in the spike trains received by downstream circuits. Computational models of the visual cortex, however, rarely take GC signal processing into account. We have built a macaque retina simulator with the aim of providing biologically plausible spike trains for downstream visual cortex simulations. The simulator is based on realistic sampling density and receptive field size as a function of eccentricity, as well as on two distinct spatial and three temporal receptive field models. Starting from data from literature and earlier receptive field measurements, we synthetize distributions for receptive field parameters, from which the synthetic units are sampled. The models are restricted for monocular and monochromatic stimuli and follow data from the temporal hemiretina which is more isotropic. We show that the model patches conform to anatomical data not used in the reconstruction process and characterize the responses with respect to spatial and temporal contrast sensitivity functions. This simulator allows starting from a stimulus video and provides biologically plausible spike trains for the distinct unit types. This supports development of thalamocortical primate model systems of vision. In addition, it can provide a reference for more biophysical retina models. The independent parameters are housed in text files supporting reparameterization for particular macaque data or other primate species. Author summary Visual environment provides a rich source of information, and the visual system structure and function has been studied for decades in many species, including humans. The most complex data in mammalian species are processed in the cerebral cortex, but to date we are still missing a functioning model of cortical computations. While the earlier anatomical and physiological data describe many details of the visual system, to understand the functional logic we need to numerically simulate the complex interactions within this system. To pave the way for simulating visual cortex computations, we have developed a functioning model for macaque retina. The neuroinformatics comprises a review and re-digitized existing retina data from literature, as well as statistics of earlier macaque receptive field data. Finally, we provide software which brings the collected neuroinformatics to life and allows researchers to convert visual input into biologically feasible spike trains for simulation experiments of visual cortex.