Tuning curves, neuronal variability, and sensory coding.

ABSTRACT: Tuning curves are widely used to characterize the responses of sensory neurons to external stimuli, but there is an ongoing debate as to their role in sensory processing. Commonly, it is assumed that a neuron's role is to encode the stimulus at the tuning curve peak, because high firing rates are the neuron's most distinct responses. In contrast, many theoretical and empirical studies have noted that nearby stimuli are most easily discriminated in high-slope regions of the tuning curve. Here, we demonstrate that both intuitions are correct, but that their relative importance depends on the experimental context and the level of variability in the neuronal response. Using three different information-based measures of encoding applied to experimentally measured sensory neurons, we show how th

SUBMITTER: Butts DA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1403159 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature