Notes

Temporal Coding Schemes with Spikes Now that we have established that spikes are the method of information transportation in the brain, it is necessary to find a way to decode them. There are several ways in which spiking data can encode information. These can be divided into two primary categories:

• Rate Coding, it refers to information being carried by the firing rate. It is often argued, or assumed, that firing rate captures essentially all relevant information.
• Temporal Coding, it may refer to several quite different ideas:
  • Much of the information may be transmitted by a neuron during certain small intervals of time.
  • Synchronous, or what I would call quasi-synchronous, firing of neurons within and across ensembles may carry important information.
  • The precise timing, or pattern, of spikes may carry information.

In the lecture, several examples were given:

• Spike Rate coding in the Cat V1 encodes direction selectivity. (Cat)
• Phase Coding in Place Cells in the Hippocampus to determine position. (Rat)
• Temporal (Latency) Coding to determine Interaural Time Difference (ITD). (Owl)