Continuous movement of remote patterns and shift-effect of cat retinal ganglion cells.

During continuous movement of a large global pattern remote from the classical receptive field retinal ganglion cells discharge considerably faster (continuous shift effect), and center responses are decreased in amplitude for neurons with a relatively high ongoing activity (mostly ON-center) but increased for neurons with no ongoing discharge (mostly OFF-center). The results suggest that all retinal ganglion cells have more or less access to one long range mechanism, which is non-linear and almost all-or-none in nature.