Real time computation: Zooming in on population codes

Information processing in nervous systems intricately combines computation at the neuronal and network levels. Many computations may be envisioned as sequences of signal processing steps along some pathway. How can information encoded by single cells be mapped onto network population codes, and how do different modules or layers in the computation synchronize their communication and computation? These fundamental questions are particularly severe when dealing with real time streams of inputs. Here we study this problem within the context of a minimal signal perception task. In particular, we encode neuronal information by externally applying a space- and time-localized stimulus to individual neurons within a network. We show that a pulse-coupled recurrent neural network can successfully handle this task in real time, and obeys three key requirements: (i) stimulus dependence, (ii) initial-conditions independence, and (iii) accessibility by a readout mechanism. In particular, we suggest...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: BIOSYSTEMS
• Authors: Olivier Rochel, Netta Cohen
• Keywords: BIOSYSTEMS 2007, Computation, Population Code, Real Time