Timescales of Multineuronal Activity Patterns Reflect Temporal Structure of Visual Stimuli

Ovidiu F Jurjuţ, Danko Nikolić, Wolf Singer, Shan Yu, Martha N Havenith and Raul C Mureşan

PLOS ONE, 2011, vol. 6, issue 2, 1-15

Abstract: The investigation of distributed coding across multiple neurons in the cortex remains to this date a challenge. Our current understanding of collective encoding of information and the relevant timescales is still limited. Most results are restricted to disparate timescales, focused on either very fast, e.g., spike-synchrony, or slow timescales, e.g., firing rate. Here, we investigated systematically multineuronal activity patterns evolving on different timescales, spanning the whole range from spike-synchrony to mean firing rate. Using multi-electrode recordings from cat visual cortex, we show that cortical responses can be described as trajectories in a high-dimensional pattern space. Patterns evolve on a continuum of coexisting timescales that strongly relate to the temporal properties of stimuli. Timescales consistent with the time constants of neuronal membranes and fast synaptic transmission (5–20 ms) play a particularly salient role in encoding a large amount of stimulus-related information. Thus, to faithfully encode the properties of visual stimuli the brain engages multiple neurons into activity patterns evolving on multiple timescales.

Date: 2011
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0016758

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016758

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