ABSTRACT

I. INTRODUCTION Neuroscientists have known for decades that sensory information is encoded in the

intervals between the action potentials or "spikes" characterizing neural firing events. Statistical analyses of experimentally obtained spike trains have shown the existence of a significant random component in the inter-spike intervals. There has been speculation, of late, that the noise may actually facilitate the transmission of sensory information; certainly there exists evidence that noise in networks of neurons can dynamically alter the properties of the membrane potential and the time constants [37,66]. The recent rekindling of interest in the Stochastic Resonance phenomenon has lead to speculation that such nonlinear cooperative effects may occur naturally in living systems.