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Retinal waves shape starburst amacrine cell dendrite development through a direction-selective dendritic computation

Pitcher, M. N.; Gonzales, A. S. B.; Habib, R.; Feller, M. B.

2026-02-04 neuroscience
10.64898/2026.02.02.701812 bioRxiv
Show abstract

During development, dendrites undergo structural plasticity in response to neural activity; however, whether spatiotemporal activity patterns can instruct dendritic growth remains unclear. Prior to vision, the developing mouse retina exhibits spontaneous retinal waves with a nasal propagation bias that mimics forward optic flow. Here, we reveal that starburst amacrine cells use direction-selective dendritic computations to transform this propagation bias into asymmetric dendrite growth, linking activity patterns to structural development.

Published in Cell Reports (predicted rank #4) · training set

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