Rainbow River of Ribbons

The objects are pseudocolored outlines of synaptic ribbons found in photoreceptors. They are needed for efficient synaptic transmission. In other words, they make sure that photoreceptors can communicate to the other neurons in the retina about whether or not there is light in the world around us. For an unknown reason, the ribbons disappear in a hereditary disease called congenital stationary night blindness.

Relaying Light

These cells are called cone bipolar neurons; their job is to collect information from cone photoreceptors, filter it, and pass it on to ganglion cells so that the information can go through one more round of processing before leaving the eye via the optic nerve.