ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the statistical methods of estimating the parameters of SICFs and NST-ICFs from realizations without any compensation for the additive Gaussian noise component. Since the discovery of membrane current fluctuations at the frog’s neuromuscular junction, so-called ‘noise’, in early 1970s, many neuro-physiologists have been interested in the underlying mechanism of membrane current fluctuations. From the viewpoint of stochastic modeling and statistical analysis, it is worthwhile to obtain a mathematical expression for the ionic channel gating mechanism. However, higher-order statistics, in general, produce large variations among estimates, and it is recommended that lower-order statistics be utilized in practice, although higher-order statistics convey other information and can be calculated theoretically.
