ABSTRACT
A fundamental question in neuroscience is how is information encoded in neural activity (Ermentrout et al., 2008; Tiesinga et al., 2008). The visual system is often used as a model to study neural encoding because both the anatomy and the response
7.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 153 7.2 Results ........................................................................................................... 154
7.2.1 Building Cell Assemblies ................................................................. 156 7.2.2 Noise Sensitivity and Reliability Resonances .................................. 157 7.2.3 Information Coding .......................................................................... 160 7.2.4 Information Transmission and Precision .......................................... 163 7.2.5 Modulation of Information Processing through Oscillations ........... 166 7.2.6 Stimulus Selection through Phase Shifting ...................................... 168
7.3 Discussion ..................................................................................................... 171 7.3.1 Computational Role of Oscillations in Other Models ...................... 172 7.3.2 Spike Phase Can Encode Stimulus Features .................................... 172 7.3.3 Phase Locking, Spike Timing Precision, and Signicance
for Cognitive Functions .................................................................... 173 7.3.4 Gamma Rhythms and Communication through Coherence ............ 174 7.3.5 Neural Oscillations and Cell Assembly Formation .......................... 174 7.3.6 Properties of Gamma Oscillations in Cortical Area V1................... 175
7.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................... 175 Appendix ................................................................................................................ 176 References .............................................................................................................. 178
properties of the cells are well characterized. When a visual stimulus is presented, a large number of cells in the visual cortex respond (Kenet et al., 2003; Tsodyks et al., 1999). Within this activated population, information may be represented in the average ring rate across a group of neurons during a short-time interval (Shadlen and Newsome, 1998), in the precise spike times produced during that interval (Bair, 1999; Bair and Koch,1996), in the correlations between a group of neurons (Averbeck and Lee, 2006), or in the correlation of spikes times with an oscillation in the local eld potential (LFP) (Kayser et al., 2009). A large number of experiments have been conducted in different neural systems to determine the reliability of these features and their information content.
