Information encoding in the inferior temporal visual cortex: contributions of the firing rates and the correlations between the firing of neurons

Biol Cybern. 2004 Jan;90(1):19-32. doi: 10.1007/s00422-003-0451-5. Epub 2003 Dec 22.

Abstract

The encoding of information by populations of neurons in the macaque inferior temporal cortex was analyzed using quantitative information-theoretic approaches. It was shown that almost all the information about which of 20 stimuli had been shown in a visual fixation task was present in the number of spikes emitted by each neuron, with stimulus-dependent cross-correlation effects adding for most sets of simultaneously recorded neurons almost no additional information. It was also found that the redundancy between the simultaneously recorded neurons was low, approximately 4% to 10%. Consistent with this, a decoding procedure applied to a population of neurons showed that the information increases approximately linearly with the number of cells in the population.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Action Potentials / physiology*
  • Animals
  • Macaca mulatta
  • Neurons / physiology*
  • Photic Stimulation / methods
  • Temporal Lobe / physiology*
  • Visual Cortex / physiology*