Vision: what is the difference between on-off ganglion cells and lateral inhibition? Is 'lateral inhibition' just a term for the biological basis of the functioning of the on-center (or off-center) ganglion cells? Or do these terms describe separate processes?

**Short answer**
Retinal center-surround receptive fields are an example of lateral inhibition. It occurs elsewhere in the nervous system too.

**Background**
Center-surround receptive fields are indeed _an example_ of lateral inhibition, where the ON field suppress the OFF field through lateral inhibition. The center-surround connectivity in the retina (Fig. 1) is indeed the most well-known example of this kind of circuitry. However, lateral inhibition occurs in other sensory systems too, for example auditory and olfactory neurons (Bakshi & Ghosh, 2017). For more information on the retinal circuitry underlying center/surround inhibition see this answer.

**References**
**-** Bakshi & Ghosh (2017), _Handbook of Neural Computation_ : 487-513.

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Fig. 1. Retinal circuitry underlying On-OFF center-surround conncetivity in ganglion cells. source: New York University