Neural coding: Difference between revisions

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[[Image:Distributed_Neural_Coding.jpg‎|thumb|400px|'''Figure 1. Distributed neural coding in colour vision'''. In 1802, Thomas Young introduced the concept of distributed neural coding in his classic trichromatic theory of colour vision. In his formulation, the combined response profile of only three retinal receptors (left), tuned to respond to a broad spectrum of light wavelength (right), can account for the representation of any colour in the visible spectrum. P, Q, R, S, colour stimuli. ]]

'''Neural coding''' is a [[neuroscience]]-related field concerned with how [[sensory]] and other information is represented in the [[brain]] by [[neurons]]. The main goal of studying neural coding is to characterize the relationship between the [[stimulus]] and the individual or ensemble neuronal responses and the relationship among electrical activity of the neurons in the ensemble <ref name="Brown">Brown EN, Kass RE, and Mitra PP. 2004. Multiple neural spike train data analysis: state-of-the-art and future challenges. ''Nature Neuroscience'' 7:456-61</ref>.

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=== Temporal Coding ===

[[Image:Firing rate.PNG|thumb|400px|'''Figure 2. Time-dependent firinig rates for different stimulus parameters.''' The rasters show multiple trias during which an MT neuron responded to the same moving, random-dot stimulus. (Adapted from Bair and Koch, 1996)]]

When precise spike timing or high-frequency firing-rate [[fluctuations]] are found to carry information, the neural code is often identified as a temporal code <ref name="Dayan">Dayan P and Abbott LF. 2001. ''Theoretical Neuroscience: Computational and Mathematical Modeling of Neural Systems''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press</ref>. A number of studies have found that the temporal resolution of the neural code is on a millisecond time scale, indicating that precise spike timing is a significant element in neural coding <ref name="Daniel">Daniel A. Butts, Chong Weng, Jianzhong Jin, Chun-I Yeh, Nicholas A. Lesica1, Jose-Manuel Alonso and Garrett B. Stanley. 2007. Temporal precision in the neural code and the timescales of natural vision. ''Nature'' 449, 92-95</ref>.