Modelling retinal mosaic development with dendritic outgrowth and lateral cell movement

Retinal cells are regularly spaced across the retina and form mosaic-like patterns. The developmental processes involved in producing such mosaics are unclear, although evidence suggests that lateral movement of cells may be involved. We extend a model of neurite outgrowth (van Ooyen and van Pelt, 1994) to allow cells to move as well as to change their dendritic extent. Starting from random initial positions, cells reorganise into regular mosaics. The network can also dynamically adapt to either increases or decreases in network size during development. Our results support the hypothesis that local cell movement produced by local dendritic interactions can generate regular mosaics.