Schröder et al. show that the output of retinal ganglion cells depends not only on visual input but also on the animal’s level of arousal. The effect of arousal propagates to downstream neurons in the midbrain, independent of cortical input. They used air-suspended Styrofoam ball visual stimuli system and recorded visual responses of retinal boutons in superior colliculus. The study is a really nice example how to image retinal synapses and in the intact brain during behavior.

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source: https://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(20)30318-4.pdf