Interestingly this has some parallels to how the brain may get wired up. During development (I.e. before the eyes have opened), there are spontaneously-generate

Interestingly this has some parallels to how the brain may get wired up. During development (I.e. before the eyes have opened), there are spontaneously-generated waves of activity in the retina that feed into the brain and may help structure the connections formed there. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinal_waves https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinal_waves [edit: I see the authors have already made this connection in the paper]