Changes in dendritic morphology in response to activity have long been thought to be a critical component of how neural circuits develop to properly encode sensory information. Ventral-preferring direction-selective ganglion cells (vDSGCs) have asymmetric dendrites oriented along their preferred direction, and this has been hypothesized to play a critical role in their tuning. Here we report the surprising result that visual experience is critical for the alignment of vDSGC dendrites to their preferred direction. Interestingly, vDSGCs in dark-reared mice lose their inhibition-independent dendritic contribution to direction-selective tuning while maintaining asymmetric inhibitory input. These data indicate that different mechanisms of a cell’s computational abilities can be constructed over development through divergent mechanisms.

长期以来，人们一直认为树突形态随活动的变化是神经回路如何正确编码感官信息的重要组成部分。腹侧优先方向选择神经节细胞（vDSGC）具有沿其优选方向定向的不对称树突，并且据推测在其调节中起关键作用。在这里，我们报告了令人惊讶的结果，即视觉体验对于vDSGC树突向其首选方向的对齐至关重要。有趣的是，在黑暗饲养的小鼠中，vDSGCs在保持非对称抑制输入的同时，失去了对方向选择性调节的依赖抑制的树突状贡献。这些数据表明，通过发散机制，可以在开发过程中构建出不同的细胞计算能力机制。