Primate retina trades single-photon detection for high-fidelity contrast encoding.

How the spike output of the retina enables human visual perception is not fully understood. Here, we address this at the sensitivity limit of vision by correlating human visual perception with the spike outputs of primate ON and OFF parasol (magnocellular) retinal ganglion cells in tightly matching stimulus conditions. We show that human vision at its ultimate sensitivity limit depends on the spike output of the ON but not the OFF retinal pathway. Consequently, nonlinear signal processing in the retinal ON pathway precludes perceptual detection of single photons in darkness but enables quantal-resolution discrimination of differences in light intensity.