The Tonic Discharge of the Retina and its Central Effects*

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The effects of light at the very onset are clearly stimulating, at least in a large proportion of the retinal elements, whereas sustained illumination, as in light adaptation, produces an overall depression of the retinofugal discharge. A comparison can be made with the afferents of the muscular system from which the attribute tonic is borrowed. Signals are continuously discharged from many sensory receptors, apparently in a random fashion, and a specific mode of excitation of the receptors brings about a pattern of the already existing outflow, thereby reproducing in a suitable code the energy patterns acting on the receptors. Available evidence gives the same picture for the retina as for other receptor systems. Time invariance of this process is implicit in the fact that the form of the distribution functions does not change when the origin is shifted along a time axis. The relation of the level of tonic activity to the intensity of light during steady illumination is elaborated in the chapter.

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    *

    The researches reviewed in this article have been sponsored jointly by the Office of Scientific Research of the Air Research and Development Command, United States Air Force, through its European Office, contract No. Af 61(052)-107 and by the Rockefeller Foundation.

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