How do stimulus-dependent correlations between V1 neurons affect neural coding?

F. MONTANI, A. KOHN AND S. R. SCHULTZ

Edinburgh (UK)

Congreso; CNS -Organization for Computational Neurosciences-; 2006

CNS

It has been known for many years that neuronal spike trains fired by adjacent cortical neurons exhibit correlations – the probability of one cell firing depend upon whether another cell fires an action potential (Zohary et al., 1994; Kreiter et al., 1996a, 1996b; Gawne et al., 1993; de Oliveira et al., 1997; Lebedev et al., 2000; Mastronarde, 1983). Whether (and how) such correlations contribute to the coding of sensory information is still highly debated. Several pieces of evidence point to correlations between V1 neurons being orientation and contrast dependent (Kohn et al., 2005). This could result from coherent spatiotemporal structure in visual stimuli, as recently proposed by Samonds and Bonds (2005); the question we are focusing on here is whether the stimulus dependence of this correlation affects the limits correlation imposes upon information transmission (Zohary et al 1994). We have used information theory to examine whether stimulus- dependent correlation could contribute to the neural coding of orientation and contrast by pairs of V1 cells.