The effect of mean luminance on the size selectivity of identified target interneurons in the dragonfly

1.	By penetrating axons in the ventral nerve cord of the dragonfly, Aeshna umbrosa, we measured the intracellular responses of target-selective visual interneurons to movement of black square targets ranging from 1° to 32° visual angle at several levels of mean background luminance.
2.	Neuronal responses, measured both in number of spikes and in the magnitude of integrated postsynaptic potentials, showed a preference for larger target size at lower mean luminance (Table 1, Figs. 1–3). The latency of postsynaptic potential (psp) and spike responses from onset of target movement increased with a decrease in mean luminance (Fig. 1).
3.	A measure of mean target size preference (Eqn. 1) for one identified interneuron (MDT4) in both laboratory and outdoor lighting shows a continuous decrease of preferred size with increases of mean luminance over more than 4 orders of magnitude.
4.	The time to reach the new steady state of cell response after the decrease of mean luminance was ordinarily less than 30 s, but sometimes longer (Fig. 4).