The Temporal Structure of the Neural Code

Asohan Amarasingham, Brown University

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The ‘time scale’ of the neural code is one of the central controversies in contemporary systems neuroscience, but measuring the temporal precision with which information is represented in trains of action potentials is plagued by fundamental difficulties: particularly, the paucity and nonstationarity of available neural data, our ignorance of the relationship between neural firing and behavioral phenomena, and the virtually unbounded number of possible sources of structure in spike processes. I will discuss techniques we have developed for measuring the significance of synchronous action potentials among pairs of neurons in the context of these general issues, as well as the results of their application to experimental data.

Abstract Author(s): Asohan Amarasingham