The Journal of Neurophysiology Vol. 87 No. 1 January 2002, pp. 42-48
Copyright ©2002 by the American Physiological Society

Temporal Properties of the Mouse Cone Electroretinogram

 ¹Research Service, Cleveland Veterans Administration Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio 44106;  ²Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois 60612;  ³Cole Eye Institute, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland 44195; and  ⁴Department of Neurosciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106

Krishna, Vivek R., Kenneth R. Alexander, and Neal S. Peachey. Temporal Properties of the Mouse Cone Electroretinogram. J. Neurophysiol. 87: 42-48, 2002. To determine the temporal response characteristics of the mouse cone electroretinogram (ERG), we recorded responses to high contrast sinusoidal stimuli ranging from 2 to 52 Hz. The largest response amplitudes obtained from wild-type (WT) mice occurred at stimulus frequencies below 10 Hz, and cone ERG amplitude declined progressively with increasing stimulus frequency above that level. In comparison, human responses recorded under the same stimulus and recording conditions displayed maximal responses to stimulus frequencies near 4 and 40 Hz, and a pronounced dip at 12 Hz. Responses were also obtained from nob (no b-wave) mice, which lack ERG contributions from depolarizing bipolar cells (DBCs). At low temporal frequencies, nob cone ERGs were smaller than those of WT mice and had a different waveform. As temporal frequency increased, nob and WT responses became more similar and came into register at the highest temporal frequencies. To evaluate the contribution of the DBC pathway to the mouse cone ERG, nob responses were vector-subtracted from those of WT mice. The derived DBC response was maximal at low stimulus frequencies and fell sharply as stimulus frequency increased. These results indicate that the mouse cone ERG is more linear than the primate response and that the temporal response of the mouse outer retina is tuned to much lower frequencies than that of primate.