Anticipation and negative group delay in a retina.

Abstract

The mechanism of negative group delay (NGD) is used to understand the anticipatory capability of a retina. Experiments with retinas from bullfrogs are performed to compare with the predictions of the NGD model. In particular, whole field stochastic stimulations with various autocorrelation times are used to probe anticipatory responses from the retina. We find that the NGD model can reproduce essential features of experimental observations characterized by the cross correlations between the stimulation and the retinal responses. Experiments with dark light pulse stimulations further support the NGD mechanism, with the retina producing time-advanced pulse responses. However, no time-advanced pulse responses are produced by bright pulses. Counterintuitively, the NGD model shows that it is the delay in the system which gives rise to anticipation because of the negative feedback adaptation mechanism.