From the mid-19th century until the 1980’s, frogs and toads provided important research models for many fundamental questions in visual neuroscience. In the present century, they have been largely neglected. Yet they are animals with highly developed vision, a complex retina built on the basic vertebrate plan, an accessible brain, and an experimentally useful behavioural repertoire. They also offer a rich diversity of species and life histories on a reasonably restricted physiological and evolutionary background. We suggest that important insights may be gained from revisiting classical questions in anurans with state-of-the-art methods. At the input to the system, this especially concerns the molecular evolution of visual pigments and photoreceptors, at the output, the relation between retinal signals, brain processing and behavioural decision-making.

从19世纪中叶到1980年代，青蛙和蟾蜍为视觉神经科学中的许多基本问题提供了重要的研究模型。在本世纪，它们在很大程度上被忽略了。然而，它们是具有高度发展的视觉的动物，建立在基本脊椎动物计划上的复杂视网膜，可触及的大脑以及实验上有用的行为方法。它们还在合理限制的生理和进化背景下提供了丰富的物种和生活史多样性。我们建议，通过使用最新方法重新审视无核动物中的经典问题，可能会获得重要的见识。在系统的输入端，这尤其涉及视觉色素和感光体的分子进化，在输出端，则涉及视网膜信号之间的关系，