Abstract
The temporal characteristics of transient and sustained retinal ganglion cells in the cat were assessed by varying the temporal relationship between a spot in the receptive field center and an annulus in the receptive field surround. The luminance of the annulus was also varied for some units. The maximum amount of suppression of the excitatory response from the center spot was produced when the annulus preceded the spot by about 38 msec for transient cells and by about 7 msec for sustained cells. The time course of peripheral inhibition for transient and sustained cells was also found to differ. These differences held at all luminance levels used but were minimized at both extremely low and extremely high contrast levels.
