Optical Imaging of Human Cone Photoreceptors Directly Following the Capture of Light

Phillip Bedggood and Andrew Metha

PLOS ONE, 2013, vol. 8, issue 11, 1-10

Abstract: Capture of light in the photoreceptor outer segment initiates a cascade of chemical events that inhibit neurotransmitter release, ultimately resulting in vision. The massed response of the photoreceptor population can be measured non-invasively by electrical recordings, but responses from individual cells cannot be measured without dissecting the retina. Here we used optical imaging to observe individual human cones in the living eye as they underwent bleaching of photopigment and associated phototransduction. The retina was simultaneously stimulated and observed with high intensity visible light at 1 kHz, using adaptive optics. There was marked variability between individual cones in both photosensitivity and pigment optical density, challenging the conventional assumption that photoreceptors act as identical subunits (coefficient of variation in rate of photoisomerization = 23%). There was also a pronounced inverse correlation between these two parameters (p

Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0079251

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0079251

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