The Development of the Vertebrate Retina: A Comparative Survey

The mature vertebrate retina is a highly complicated array of several kinds of cells, capable of receiving light impulses, transforming them into neuronal membrane currents, and transmitting these in a meaningful way to central processing. Before it starts to develop, it is a small sheet of unconspicuous cells, which do not differ from other cells of the central nervous system. The chain of events which lead to the trans­ formation from this stage into that of highly specialized cells ready...