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Information processing in the LGN: a comparison of neural codes and cell types
To understand how anatomy and physiology allow an organism to perform its function, it is important to know how information that is transmitted by spikes in the brain is received and encoded. A natural question is whether the spike rate alone encodes the information about a stimulus (rate code), or...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6658673/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31243531 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00422-019-00801-0 |
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author | Pregowska, Agnieszka Casti, Alex Kaplan, Ehud Wajnryb, Eligiusz Szczepanski, Janusz |
author_facet | Pregowska, Agnieszka Casti, Alex Kaplan, Ehud Wajnryb, Eligiusz Szczepanski, Janusz |
author_sort | Pregowska, Agnieszka |
collection | PubMed |
description | To understand how anatomy and physiology allow an organism to perform its function, it is important to know how information that is transmitted by spikes in the brain is received and encoded. A natural question is whether the spike rate alone encodes the information about a stimulus (rate code), or additional information is contained in the temporal pattern of the spikes (temporal code). Here we address this question using data from the cat Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN), which is the visual portion of the thalamus, through which visual information from the retina is communicated to the visual cortex. We analyzed the responses of LGN neurons to spatially homogeneous spots of various sizes with temporally random luminance modulation. We compared the Firing Rate with the Shannon Information Transmission Rate , which quantifies the information contained in the temporal relationships between spikes. We found that the behavior of these two rates can differ quantitatively. This suggests that the energy used for spiking does not translate directly into the information to be transmitted. We also compared Firing Rates with Information Rates for X-ON and X-OFF cells. We found that, for X-ON cells the Firing Rate and Information Rate often behave in a completely different way, while for X-OFF cells these rates are much more highly correlated. Our results suggest that for X-ON cells a more efficient “temporal code” is employed, while for X-OFF cells a straightforward “rate code” is used, which is more reliable and is correlated with energy consumption. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6658673 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Springer Berlin Heidelberg |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-66586732019-08-07 Information processing in the LGN: a comparison of neural codes and cell types Pregowska, Agnieszka Casti, Alex Kaplan, Ehud Wajnryb, Eligiusz Szczepanski, Janusz Biol Cybern Original Article To understand how anatomy and physiology allow an organism to perform its function, it is important to know how information that is transmitted by spikes in the brain is received and encoded. A natural question is whether the spike rate alone encodes the information about a stimulus (rate code), or additional information is contained in the temporal pattern of the spikes (temporal code). Here we address this question using data from the cat Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN), which is the visual portion of the thalamus, through which visual information from the retina is communicated to the visual cortex. We analyzed the responses of LGN neurons to spatially homogeneous spots of various sizes with temporally random luminance modulation. We compared the Firing Rate with the Shannon Information Transmission Rate , which quantifies the information contained in the temporal relationships between spikes. We found that the behavior of these two rates can differ quantitatively. This suggests that the energy used for spiking does not translate directly into the information to be transmitted. We also compared Firing Rates with Information Rates for X-ON and X-OFF cells. We found that, for X-ON cells the Firing Rate and Information Rate often behave in a completely different way, while for X-OFF cells these rates are much more highly correlated. Our results suggest that for X-ON cells a more efficient “temporal code” is employed, while for X-OFF cells a straightforward “rate code” is used, which is more reliable and is correlated with energy consumption. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2019-06-26 2019 /pmc/articles/PMC6658673/ /pubmed/31243531 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00422-019-00801-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
spellingShingle | Original Article Pregowska, Agnieszka Casti, Alex Kaplan, Ehud Wajnryb, Eligiusz Szczepanski, Janusz Information processing in the LGN: a comparison of neural codes and cell types |
title | Information processing in the LGN: a comparison of neural codes and cell types |
title_full | Information processing in the LGN: a comparison of neural codes and cell types |
title_fullStr | Information processing in the LGN: a comparison of neural codes and cell types |
title_full_unstemmed | Information processing in the LGN: a comparison of neural codes and cell types |
title_short | Information processing in the LGN: a comparison of neural codes and cell types |
title_sort | information processing in the lgn: a comparison of neural codes and cell types |
topic | Original Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6658673/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31243531 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00422-019-00801-0 |
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