Modelling retinal mosaic development with dendritic outgrowth and lateral cell movement

Eglen, S. J., and Van Ooyen, A. (1999). In: Artificial Neural Networks - ICANN 1999, 9th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, Edinburgh, UK, September 1999, pp. 377-382. [Full text: PDF]

Abstract

Retinal cells are regularly spaced across the retina and form mosaic-like patterns. The developmental processes involved in producing such mosaics are unclear, although recent evidence suggests that lateral movement of cells may be involved.

In this paper, we extend an outgrowth model of neurite outgrowth to allow cells to move as well as to change their dendritic extent. Starting from random initial positions, cells reorganize into regular mosaics. The network can also dynamically adapt to either increases or decreases in network size during development. Our results support the hypothesis that local cell movement produced by local dendritic interactions can generate regular mosaics.

Some movies of mosaic formation are available.