Publication Date:
1980-11-28
Description:
At night efferent optic nerve activity generated by a circadian clock in the Limulus brain changes the structure of the photoreceptor and surrounding pigment cells in the animal's lateral eyes. The structural changes allow each ommatidium to gather light from a wider area at night than during the day. Visual sensitivity is thereby increased, but spatial resolution is diminished. At daybreak efferent activity from the clock stops, the structural changes reverse, and the field of view of each ommatidium decreases. The cyclic changes are endogenous and continue in the dark. Thus, under the control of a circadian clock, the Limulus eye exchanges its daytime acuity for greater sensitivity at night.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Barlow, R B Jr -- Chamberlain, S C -- Levinson, J Z -- EY-00667/EY/NEI NIH HHS/ -- EY-01640/EY/NEI NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1980 Nov 28;210(4473):1037-9.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7434015" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Action Potentials
;
Afferent Pathways
;
Animals
;
Brain/physiology
;
Circadian Rhythm
;
Efferent Pathways
;
Eye/anatomy & histology
;
Horseshoe Crabs/*physiology
;
Ocular Physiological Phenomena
;
Optic Nerve/physiology
;
Photoreceptor Cells/physiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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