Hello fello Eyewirers,
I went thru the discussion sections regarding feature requests, and I don’t think that my idea has been brought up yet.
I tend to move the 3D view around so much, that I find myself using the computers (example) up arrow, which would move the slice plane down, and vice versa.
What I am asking for is perhaps an up / down arrow beside the 3d view, so that the user can keep orientated with their computers up/down keys
Thanks,
chairflyer2002
That’s a great idea, thanks chairflyer2002!
Another type of Orientation Marker suggestion:
It would be often helpful to know the orientation of the cube in relation to the retinal layering.
This can be shortly guessed from the overview before zooming, but even the overview does not tell about the orientation. The cell body branching could be “down” from the INL as in most (if not displaced) amacrines or “up” as in most ganglion cells. As with the new game metapher there come no more assumptions on the type
of cells (I would very much have this back, even if it is sometimes
speculative)
A minimum hint could be to label the edges outlining the proximal and the distal planes limiting each cube in different colors say Yellow and Red - or just thicken one of them.
Another option would be to give something similar to the overviews: delineators for the proximal and distal borders of the IPL. This would help interested participants to place the puzzles in the bigger picture
and perhaps make guesses themselves about the emerging cell types.
If you do the above, please include links to explanations for those of us who know nothing about neural anatomy.
You are right
what we are working on here is essentially a sublayer of the eye’s neuronal tissue - the retina, the so called inner plexiform layer = the red zone in this neat block-scheme from the WebVision page
http://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-ii-anatomy-and-physiology-of-the-retina/inner-plexiform-laye/
besides some other cells (partly running through), the amacrine cells feed their dendrites into this volume from “above” =distal and the ganglion cells from “below” = proximal, establishing ± specific contact patterns among each other.
Most of the amacrine and ganglion cells establish their dendritic “umbrellas” in one or several distinct sublayers (usually named s1,s2,s3,s4) of this inner plexiform layer (IPL), others branch out more diffusely.
The amacrine and gg cells we are working on are currently floating in virtual space, without a hint what is “up” and what is “down”, and how far the dendrites actually reach into the IPL.
So it would be nice to have an outline (wireframe) of the IPL borders (the distal along the last row of inner nuclear cell bodies = mostly our amacrines and the proximal = bordering to the ganglion cell bodies. Even more elegant would be a “wireframe box” around the initial elements of a cell to be reconstructed. The box might then grow with added dendrites - with different colors for the upper and the lower IPL edges, and could be turned ON and OFF in the menue.