Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Mind the gap: decoding decreases in tonic firing in populations of spiking neurons

View ORCID ProfileSylvia C. L. Durian, View ORCID ProfileMark Agrios, View ORCID ProfileGregory W. Schwartz
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.04.21.488999
Sylvia C. L. Durian
1Departments of Ophthalmology and Neuroscience, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Sylvia C. L. Durian
Mark Agrios
2Northwestern Interdepartmental Neuroscience Graduate Program, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Mark Agrios
Gregory W. Schwartz
1Departments of Ophthalmology and Neuroscience, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA
2Northwestern Interdepartmental Neuroscience Graduate Program, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
3Department of Neurobiology, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Gregory W. Schwartz
  • For correspondence: greg.schwartz@northwestern.edu
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

A stimulus can be encoded in a population of spiking neurons through any change in the statistics of their spike patterns. Thus, the baseline spike statistics in the absence of a stimulus can impact the population’s encoding capacity. Some neurons maintain a baseline firing pattern and can decrease their spike rate in response to a stimulus. Not only do baseline firing rates vary widely among different types of neurons, but so do their higher-order statistics, like the degree to which they tend to group their spikes together into bursts and how those bursts are grouped across the population. We investigated how higher-order statistics of baseline spike patterns impact how much information a neural population can transmit about a stimulus that drives a gap in firing using a novel information-theoretic decoding mechanism which we call an “information train.” We discover that there is an optimal level of burstiness for gap detection that is robust to other parameters of the neural population like its size, mean firing rate, and level of correlation. We consider this theoretical result in the context of experimental data from different types of retinal ganglion cells with different baseline spike statistics and determine that the spike statistics of bursty suppressed-by-contrast (bSbC) retinal ganglion cells support nearly optimal detection of both the onset and strength of a contrast step.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted April 22, 2022.
Download PDF
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Mind the gap: decoding decreases in tonic firing in populations of spiking neurons
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Mind the gap: decoding decreases in tonic firing in populations of spiking neurons
Sylvia C. L. Durian, Mark Agrios, Gregory W. Schwartz
bioRxiv 2022.04.21.488999; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.04.21.488999
Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Mind the gap: decoding decreases in tonic firing in populations of spiking neurons
Sylvia C. L. Durian, Mark Agrios, Gregory W. Schwartz
bioRxiv 2022.04.21.488999; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.04.21.488999

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Neuroscience
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4383)
  • Biochemistry (9602)
  • Bioengineering (7097)
  • Bioinformatics (24869)
  • Biophysics (12624)
  • Cancer Biology (9962)
  • Cell Biology (14361)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (7961)
  • Ecology (12111)
  • Epidemiology (2067)
  • Evolutionary Biology (15990)
  • Genetics (10929)
  • Genomics (14745)
  • Immunology (9871)
  • Microbiology (23681)
  • Molecular Biology (9486)
  • Neuroscience (50889)
  • Paleontology (369)
  • Pathology (1540)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2683)
  • Physiology (4019)
  • Plant Biology (8657)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1510)
  • Synthetic Biology (2397)
  • Systems Biology (6440)
  • Zoology (1346)