title: Intrinsic variability of latency to first-spike.
abstract: The assessment of the variability of neuronal spike timing is fundamental to gain understanding of latency coding. Based on recent mathematical results, we investigate theoretically the impact of channel noise on latency variability. For large numbers of ion channels, we derive the asymptotic distribution of latency, together with an explicit expression for its variance. Consequences in terms of information processing are studied with Fisher information in the Morris-Lecar model. A competition between sensitivity to input and precision is responsible for favoring two distinct regimes of latencies.
authors.affiliation: Centre de Recherche en Epistémologie Appliquée, UMR 7656, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS, Paris, France. gilles.wainrib@polytechnique.org
authors.forename: Gilles
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wainrib
authors.forename: Wainrib
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Gilles
authors.forename: Michèle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Thieullen
authors.forename: Thieullen
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Michèle
authors.forename: Khashayar
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Pakdaman
authors.forename: Pakdaman
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Khashayar
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D002462:Cell Membrane / Q000502:physiology*; D002490:Central Nervous System / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D015640:Ion Channel Gating / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D009435:Synaptic Transmission / Q000502:physiology*