SANTA CRUZ, CA--A research team combining high-energy physicists from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and neuroscientists from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., has discovered a type of retinal cell that may help monkeys, apes, and humans see motion. The team’s work appears in the October 10 issue of Journal of Neuroscience.The cell type has very similar properties to so-called Y retinal ganglion cells, which were first described in cats in 1966. Upon the Y-cell’s discovery, scientists began a decades-long search for its counterpart in primates. The UCSC–Salk Institute team named the new cell type the upsilon cell, after the Greek uppercase letter written as “Y.”
