Definition
The developing retina displays spontaneous activity characterized by correlated, propagating activity patterns (Wong 1999; Blankenship and Feller 2010). Retinal waves are hypothesized to provide cues for the development of retinal receptive fields and projections from the retina to higher visual brain areas (Sernagor et al. 2001; Torborg and Feller 2005). Several computational models have been developed to simulate retinal waves, which have helped to shed light on the mechanisms involved in their generation (Godfrey and Eglen 2009). Two different approaches have been used in these models; they simulate networks either as cellular automata or using biophysical neurons models. These models also provide tools for generating synthetic activity to investigate the role of retinal waves in models of visual system development.
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Hennig, M.H. (2015). Retinal Waves, Models of. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6675-8_399
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6675-8_399
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