title: The amount of information transmitted about contrast by neurones in the cat's visual cortex.
abstract: The responses of neurones in the cat's visual cortex are very variable in amplitude. Thus, although the average response amplitude of a single neurone depends closely upon the contrast of a sinusoidal grating, the instantaneous amplitude of the response can convey little information about the grating's contrast. This paper shows that a typical cortical neurone can convey less than one bit of information about contrast in 0.5 s. The amount of information that a neurone can convey is closely correlated with the neurone's responsivity.
authors.affiliation: Physiological Laboratory, Cambridge, England.
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Tolhurst
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002415:Cats; D015350:Contrast Sensitivity / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D009435:Synaptic Transmission; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*