coding and decoding with adapting neurons a population approach to the peri-stimulus time histogram编码和解码与适应神经元人口peri-stimulus时间直方图的方法.pdfVIP

Coding and Decoding with Adapting Neurons: A Population Approach to the Peri-Stimulus Time Histogram Richard Naud, Wulfram Gerstner* ´ ´ School of Computer and Communication Sciences and School of Life Sciences, Brain Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne-EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland Abstract The response of a neuron to a time-dependent stimulus, as measured in a Peri-Stimulus-Time-Histogram (PSTH), exhibits an intricate temporal structure that reflects potential temporal coding principles. Here we analyze the encoding and decoding of PSTHs for spiking neurons with arbitrary refractoriness and adaptation. As a modeling framework, we use the spike response model, also known as the generalized linear neuron model. Because of refractoriness, the effect of the most recent spike on the spiking probability a few milliseconds later is very strong. The influence of the last spike needs therefore to be described with high precision, while the rest of the neuronal spiking history merely introduces an average self-inhibition or adaptation that depends on the expected number of past spikes but not on the exact spike timings. Based on these insights, we derive a ‘quasi-renewal equation’ which is shown to yield an excellent description of the firing rate of adapting neurons. We explore the domain of validity of the quasi-renewal equation and compare it with other rate equations for populations of spiking neurons. The problem of decoding the stimulus from the population response (or PSTH) is addressed analogously. We find that for small levels of activity and weak adaptation, a simple accumulator of the past activity is sufficient to decode the original input, but when refractory effects become larg