Invariant neural responses for sensory categories revealed by the time-varying information for communication calls.

ABSTRACT: Although information theoretic approaches have been used extensively in the analysis of the neural code, they have yet to be used to describe how information is accumulated in time while sensory systems are categorizing dynamic sensory stimuli such as speech sounds or visual objects. Here, we present a novel method to estimate the cumulative information for stimuli or categories. We further define a time-varying categorical information index that, by comparing the information obtained for stimuli versus categories of these same stimuli, quantifies invariant neural representations. We use these methods to investigate the dynamic properties of avian cortical auditory neurons recorded in zebra finches that were listening to a large set of call stimuli sampled from the complete vocal repertoir

SUBMITTER: Elie JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6762074 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature