Information processing in the LGN: a comparison of neural codes and cell types.

Information processing in the LGN: a comparison of neural codes and cell types. Biol Cybern. 2019 Jun 26;: Authors: Pregowska A, Casti A, Kaplan E, Wajnryb E, Szczepanski J Abstract 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 d...
Source: Biological Cybernetics - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Biol Cybern Source Type: research