The Plastic Glial-Synaptic Dynamics within the Neuropil: A Self-Organizing System Composed of Polyelectrolytes in Phase Transition

Figure 7

Extracellular potential recorded at the inner plexiform layer and the wave IOS recorded simultaneously. The IOS was recorded at two different spatial scales. µIOS time series depicts the mean brightness of the 50 µm square pixel matrix overlaying the electrode tip and IOS the photomultiplier output that samples the scattered photons of a circular area of central retina with a 1 mm diameter. The wave recorded was from a series of 44 isolated circular waves from 34 retinas [17]. This wave had a “zero potential” record at the usual amplification. However, when the time derivative of the µIOS was calculated, a small sharp transient (about 200 µV/100 ms) coincided with the peak of µIOS/, suggesting that asynchronous small transients were present at the inner plexiform layer instead of the typical synchronous potential drop at wave onset. Note the sharp onset of the µIOS, whose peak coincided with the macroscopic IOS peak (the electrode tip is at the centre of the photomultiplier’s sampled circle) and slow smooth growth of the IOS time series: the photomultiplier is integrating (summing up) many µIOS signals from a large area.