Stimulus statistics and adaptation in the blowfly H1 neuron

H1, a motion sensitive neuron in the blowfly visual system, allows long and stable recordings, and excellent quantitative control of its sensory input. These are among the attributes that have made H1 a good choice for quantitative studies of neural coding. Though nominally motion sensitive, the way in which H1 responds is strongly influenced by attributes of the visual environment other than motion per se. For example, dynamical aspects of its response depend on the recent history of stimulus speed (de Ruyter van Steveninck et al, Biol Cybern. 54, 223 (1986)), and the gain of the response to random motion adapts almost completely to the standard deviation of the velocity distribution (Brenner et al., Neuron 26:695 (2000), Fairhall et al., Nature 412:787 (2001)). Recent work in our lab using stimuli with fluctuating stimulus contrast, has demonstrated that H1’s input output behavior also adapts very strongly to the width of the contrast distribution. These experimental results will be discussed in the context of optimizing coding and information transmission.