In the arthropod medulla, which is the second ganglion on the afferent visual pathway, a column of about 40 cells represents each point in space (i.e. compound eye facet). Some stages of visual processing underlying the responses of one class of cells in the locust medulla have been identified. These transient cells give very similar responses to intensity increments and decrements, and also to pulses and steps; there is no spontaneous activity and a stimulus causes one or two spikes to fire at fixed latencies. Movement, however, produces a prolonged spike discharge by successive excitation of subunits within the receptive field.

One of the main features of the transient cells' responses is a self-inhibition which attenuates responses to successive stimuli at one point. This inhibition is restricted to the outputs of single receptor (rhabdom), it decays after about 100 ms, and is polarity sensitive so that stimuli of one polarity (e.g. dimming) do not inhibit responses to stimuli of the opposite polarity (e.g. brightening). The inhibition effectively alters the contrast threshold of the cells, because after adaptation with stimuli of one contrast, a modest (<20%) increase in contrast is sufficient to elicit an unadapted response. Transient cells are not directionally selective and there are no local spatio-temporal interactions of the kind necessary for directional selectivity. But, by analogy with the directional veto in directionally selective cells in the rabbit retina (Barlow & Levick, 1965), self-inhibition is suggested as a mechanism of non-directional motion detection. After the inhibition, there is some spatial pooling of signals which is followed by rectification. The transient cells' spiking outputs could abstract a refined subset of visual information which may encode the presence, but not the direction, amplitude, or polarity of moving object borders.

In the developing nervous system, building a functional neuronal network relies on coordinating the formation, specification and survival to diverse neuronal and glial cell subtypes. The establishment of neuronal connections further depends on sequential neuron–neuron and neuron–glia interactions that regulate cell-migration patterns and axon guidance. The visual system of Drosophila has a highly regular, retinotopic organization into reiterated interconnected synaptic circuits. It is therefore an excellent invertebrate model to investigate basic cellular strategies and molecular determinants regulating the different developmental processes that lead to network formation. Studies in the visual system have provided important insights into the mechanisms by which photoreceptor axons connect with their synaptic partners within the optic lobe. In this review, we highlight that this system is also well suited for uncovering general principles that underlie glial cell biology. We describe the glial cell subtypes in the visual system and discuss recent findings about their development and migration. Finally, we outline the pivotal roles of glial cells in mediating neural circuit assembly, boundary formation, neural proliferation and survival, as well as synaptic function.