Sensory neural codes using multiplexed temporal scales.
Determining how neuronal activity represents sensory information is central for understanding perception. Recent work shows that neural responses at different timescales can encode different stimulus attributes, resulting in a temporal multiplexing of sensory information. Multiplexing increases the encoding capacity of neural responses, enables disambiguation of stimuli that cannot be discriminated at a single response timescale, and makes sensory representations stable to the presence of variability in the sensory world. Thus, as we discuss here, temporal multiplexing could be a key strategy used by the brain to form an information-rich and stable representation of the environment.
Panzeri
Stefano
S
Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, Italian Institute of Technology, Via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy. stefano.panzeri@iit.it
Brunel
Nicolas
N
Logothetis
Nikos K
NK
Kayser
Christoph
C
D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D007257:Information Theory; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012677:Sensation / Q000502:physiology*; D011984:Sensory Receptor Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*