Effect of membrane nonlinearity on retinal LHC´s light response

In the fish retinas, it was found that a dim red background light could enhance the luminosity-type cone-driven horizontal cell´s (LHC) light response to green stimulus and vice versa (Kamermans et al., 1989; Luo & Liang, 2003). Some presynaptic mechanisms have been reported to be involved in these phenomena (Luo & Liang, 2003) and other research results show that postsynaptic signals interaction may also contribute to the enhancement (Kamermans et al., 1989). Another possibility is that these changes in HC response are related to postsynaptic membrane properties of the HC. The purpose of this study is to characterize the effect of HC´s membrane nonlinearity underlying the background induced changes in the HC response amplitude by a cone-HC model analysis.