At the retinal output, a common assumption is that ganglion cells of a single type extract a single stimulus feature from the visual scene to form a feature map. Yet they can also respond to very distant stimulations, and both the function and the circuits of these distant responses are unclear. Using large-scale recordings in the rodent retina combined with quantitative modeling, we have shown that they allow ganglion cells of a single type to code for several features simultaneously, providing a richer, flexible map to the brain. We have then developed novel optical tools to selectively manipulate cells in the intermediate layers of the retina and start uncovering the circuits responsible for these flexible computations.