Neural Synchrony Gives Rise to Amplitude- and Duration-Invariant Encoding Consistent With Perception of Natural Communication Stimuli.

ABSTRACT: When confronted with a highly variable environment, it remains poorly understood how neural populations encode and classify natural stimuli to give rise to appropriate and consistent behavioral responses. Here we investigated population coding of natural communication signals with different attributes (i.e., amplitude and duration) in the electrosensory system of the weakly electric fish Apteronotus leptorhynchus. Our results show that, while single peripheral neurons encode the detailed timecourse of different stimulus waveforms, measures of population synchrony are effectively unchanged because of coordinated increases and decreases in activity. A phenomenological mathematical model reproduced this invariance and shows that this can be explained by considering homogeneous populations who

SUBMITTER: Metzen MG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7025533 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature