A neuronal network for computing population vectors in the leech

John E. Lewis and William B. Kristan ()
Additional contact information
John E. Lewis: University of Ottawa
William B. Kristan: University of California, San Diego

Nature, 1998, vol. 391, issue 6662, 76-79

Abstract: Abstract The correlation of neuronal activity with sensory input and behavioural output has revealed that information is often encoded in the activity of many neurons across a population, that is, a neural population code is used1,2. The possible algorithms that downstream networks use to read out this population code have been studied by manipulating the activity of a few neurons in a population3,4. We have used this approach to study population coding in a small network underlying the leech local bend, a body bend directed away from a touch stimulus5. Because of the small size of this network we are able to monitor and manipulate the complete set of sensory inputs to the network. We show here that the population vector6 formed by the spike counts of the active mechanosensory neurons is well correlated with bend direction. A model based on the known connectivity of the identified neurons in the local bend network can account for our experimental results, and is suitable for reading out the neural population vector. Thus, for the first time to our knowledge, it is possible to link a proposed algorithm for neural population coding with synaptic and network mechanisms in an experimental system.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/34172 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:391:y:1998:i:6662:d:10.1038_34172

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/34172

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().