The episodic nature of spike trains in the early visual pathway.

ABSTRACT: An understanding of the neural code in a given visual area is often confounded by the immense complexity of visual stimuli combined with the number of possible meaningful patterns that comprise the response spike train. In the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), visual stimulation generates spike trains comprised of short spiking episodes ("events") separated by relatively long intervals of silence, which establishes a basis for in-depth analysis of the neural code. By studying this event structure in both artificial and natural visual stimulus contexts and at different contrasts, we are able to describe the dependence of event structure on stimulus class and discern which aspects generalize. We find that the event structure on coarse time scales is robust across stimulus and contrast and ca

SUBMITTER: Butts DA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3007659 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature