scholarly journals THE REGENERATION OF VISUAL PURPLE IN THE LIVING ANIMAL

1942 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
James C. Peskin

1. The accumulation of visual purple in the retina after bleaching by light has been studied in the intact eye of the frog. The data show that duration and intensity of light adaptation, which influence the course of human dark adaptation as measured in terms of visual threshold, have a similar influence on the course of visual purple regeneration. 2. At 25°C. frogs which have been light adapted to 1700 millilamberts and then placed in the dark, show an increase in visual purple concentration which begins immediately and continues for 70 minutes until a maximum concentration is attained. The increase, although beginning at once, is slow at first, then proceeds rapidly, and finally slows up towards the end. Frogs which have been adapted to 9500 millilamberts show essentially the same phenomenon except that the initial slow period is strongly delayed so that almost no visual purple is formed in the first 10 minutes. 3. At 15°C. the initial delay in visual purple regeneration occurs following light adaptation to both 1700 and 9500 millilamberts. The delay is about 10 minutes and is slightly longer following the higher light adaptation. 4. The entire course of visual purple accumulation in the dark takes longer at the lower temperature than at the higher. The temperature coefficient for 10°C. is about 1.8. 5. In contrast to the behavior of the isolated retina which has small amounts of vitamin A and large amounts of retinene immediately after exposure to light, the intact eye has large amounts of vitamin A and little retinene after exposure to light for 10 minutes. In the intact eye during dark adaptation, the amount of vitamin A decreases markedly while retinene decreases only slightly in amount. If retinene is formed in the intact eye, the change from retinene to vitamin A must therefore occur rapidly in contrast to the slow change in the isolated retina. 6. The course of visual purple regeneration may be described by the equation for a first order autocatalyzed reaction. This supposes that the regeneration of visual purple is catalyzed by visual purple itself and accounts for the sigmoid shape of the data.

1978 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 369-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
D R Pepperberg ◽  
P K Brown ◽  
M Lurie ◽  
J E Dowling

Photoreceptor potentials were recorded extracellularly from the aspartate-treated, isolated retina of the skate (Raja oscellata and R. erinacea), and the effects of externally applied retinal were studied both electrophysiologically and spectrophotometrically. In the absence of applied retinal, strong light adaptation leads to an irreversible depletion of rhodopsin and a sustained elevation of receptor threshold. For example, after the bleaching of 60% of the rhodopsin initially present in dark-adapted receptors, the threshold of the receptor response stabilizes at a level about 3 log units above the dark-adapted value. The application of 11-cis retinal to strongly light-adapted photoreceptors induces both a rapid, substantial lowering of receptor threshold and a shift of the entire intensity-response curve toward greater sensitivity. Exogenous 11-cis retinal also promotes the formation of rhodopsin in bleached photoreceptors with a time-course similar to that of the sensitization measured electrophysiologically. All-trans and 13-cis retinal, when applied to strongly light-adapted receptors, fail to promote either an increase in receptor sensitivity or the formation of significant amounts of light-sensitive pigment within the receptors. However, 9-cis retinal isin. These findings provide strong evidence that the regeneration of visual pigment in the photoreceptors directly regulates the process of photochemical dark adaptation.


1937 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Wald ◽  
Anna-Betty Clark

1. The reality of a chemical cycle proposed to describe the rhodopsin system is tested with dark adaptation measurements. 2. The first few minutes of rod dark adaptation are rapid following short, slower following long irradiation. As dark adaptation proceeds, the slow process grows more prominent, and occupies completely the final stages of adaptation. 3. Light adaptation displays similar duality. As the exposure to light of constant intensity lengthens, the visual threshold rises, and independently the speed of dark adaptation decreases. 4. These results conform with predictions from the chemical equations.


1995 ◽  
Vol 198 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
AI Ro ◽  
DE Nilsson

The pupil mechanism in the acone apposition eye of the semi-aquatic common backswimmer Notonecta glauca (Hemiptera) was investigated with infrared reflectometry of the pseudopupil. This method allows non-invasive continuous measurements of pupil responses in the living animal. The dynamic range of the pupil sensitivity is about 7 log units during daytime and 6 log units at night. During the day, the sensitivity range of the pupil covers the normal daylight intensities in the animal's habitat, just under the water surface (I50=10(19.2) photons m-2 sr-1 s-1). At night, the sensitivity is 1 log unit lower (I50=10(20.2) photons m-2 sr-1 s-1), ensuring that the pupil is maximally open when light intensities are low. During daytime, light adaptation is completed in slightly less than 40 min, and dark adaptation takes approximately 50 min. The pupil response is only slightly slower at night. The speed of the response as well as the pupil sensitivity are dependent on the preceding adaptation history. An endogenous circadian rhythm determines the control range of the pupil aperture. However, the rhythm is easily disturbed, especially within a 3 h period before dusk and dawn. The results are compared with corresponding results from other insects with the same type of pupil mechanism.


1935 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Wald

1. Carotenoids have been identified and their quantities measured in the eyes of several frog species. The combined pigment epithelium and choroid layer of an R. pipiens or esculenta eye contain about 1γ of xanthophyll and about 4γ of vitamin A. During light adaptation the xanthophyll content falls 10 to 20 per cent. 2. Light adapted retinas contain about 0.2–0.3 γ of vitamin A alone. 3. Dark adapted retinas contain only a trace of vitamin A. The destruction of their visual purple with chloroform liberates a hitherto undescribed carotenoid, retinene. The bleaching of visual purple to visual yellow by light also liberates retinene. Free retinene is removed from the isolated retina by two thermal processes: reversion to visual purple and decomposition to colorless products, including vitamin A. This is the source of the vitamin A of the light adapted retina. 4. Isolated retinas which have been bleached and allowed to fade completely contain several times as much vitamin A as retinas from light adapted animals. The visual purple system therefore expends vitamin A and is dependent upon the diet for its replacement. 5. Visual purple behaves as a conjugated protein in which retinene is the prosthetic group. 6. Vitamin A is the precursor of visual purple as well as the product of its decomposition. The visual processes therefore constitute a cycle.


2021 ◽  
pp. 101074
Author(s):  
Dan Zhang ◽  
Kiera Robinson ◽  
Leonide Saad ◽  
Ilyas Washington
Keyword(s):  

Science ◽  
1938 ◽  
Vol 87 (2267) ◽  
pp. 534-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Haig ◽  
S. Hecht ◽  
A. J. Patek

1982 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
DONALD H. EDWARDS

1. The responses of the cockroach descending contralateral movement detector (DCMD) neurone to moving light stimuli were studied under both light- and dark-adapted conditions. 2. With light-adaptation the response of the DCMD to two moving 2° (diam.) spots of white light is less than the response to a single spot when the two spots are separated by less than 10° (Fig. 2). 3. With light-adaptation the response of the DCMD to a single moving light spot is a sigmoidally shaped function of the logarithm of the light intensity (Fig. 3a). With dark-adaptation the response of a DCMD to a single moving light spot is a bell-shaped function of the logarithm of the stimulus intensity (Fig. 3b). The absolute intensity that evokes a threshold response is about one-and-a-half log units less in the dark-adapted eye than in the light-adapted eye. 4. The decrease in the DCMD's response that occurs when two stimuli are closer than 10°, and when a single bright stimulus is made brighter, indicates that lateral inhibition operates among the afferents to the DCMD. 5. It is shown that this inhibition cannot be produced by a recurrent lateral inhibitory network. A model of the afferent path that contains a non-recurrent lateral inhibitory network can account for the response/intensity plots of the DCMD recorded under both light-adapted and dark-adapted conditions. 6. The threshold intensity of the DCMD is increased if a stationary pattern of light is present near the path of the moving spot stimulus. This is shown to be due to a peripheral tonic lateral inhibition that is distinct from the non-recurrent lateral inhibition described earlier. 7. It is suggested that the peripheral lateral inhibition acts to adjust the threshold of afferents to local background light levels, while the proximal non-recurrent network acts to enhance the acuity of the eye to small objects in the visual field, and to filter out whole-field stimuli.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document