TY - JOUR
T1 - Synergy from silence in a combinatorial neural code
AU - Schneidman, Elad
AU - Puchalla, Jason L.
AU - Segev, Ronen
AU - Harris, Robert A.
AU - Bialek, William
AU - Berry, Michael J.
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - The manner in which groups of neurons represent events in the external world is a central question in neuroscience. Estimation of the information encoded by small groups of neurons has shown that inmanyneural systems, cells carry mildly redundant information. These measures average over all the activity patterns of a neural population. Here, we analyze the population code of the salamander and guinea pig retinas by quantifying the information conveyed by specific multicell activity patterns. Synchronous spikes, even though they are relatively rare and highly informative, convey less information than the sum of either spike alone, making them redundant coding symbols. Instead, patterns of spiking in one cell and silence in others, which are relativelycommonand often overlooked as special coding symbols, were found to be mostly synergistic. Our results reflect that the mild average redundancy between ganglion cells that was previously reported is actually the result of redundant and synergistic multicell patterns, whose contributions partially cancel each other when taking the average over all patterns.Wefurther show that similar coding properties emerge in a generic model of neural responses, suggesting that this form of combinatorial coding, in which specific compound patterns carry synergistic or redundant information, may exist in other neural circuits.
AB - The manner in which groups of neurons represent events in the external world is a central question in neuroscience. Estimation of the information encoded by small groups of neurons has shown that inmanyneural systems, cells carry mildly redundant information. These measures average over all the activity patterns of a neural population. Here, we analyze the population code of the salamander and guinea pig retinas by quantifying the information conveyed by specific multicell activity patterns. Synchronous spikes, even though they are relatively rare and highly informative, convey less information than the sum of either spike alone, making them redundant coding symbols. Instead, patterns of spiking in one cell and silence in others, which are relativelycommonand often overlooked as special coding symbols, were found to be mostly synergistic. Our results reflect that the mild average redundancy between ganglion cells that was previously reported is actually the result of redundant and synergistic multicell patterns, whose contributions partially cancel each other when taking the average over all patterns.Wefurther show that similar coding properties emerge in a generic model of neural responses, suggesting that this form of combinatorial coding, in which specific compound patterns carry synergistic or redundant information, may exist in other neural circuits.
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U2 - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0301-09.2011
DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0301-09.2011
M3 - Article
C2 - 22049416
AN - SCOPUS:80155137536
SN - 0270-6474
VL - 31
SP - 15732
EP - 15741
JO - Journal of Neuroscience
JF - Journal of Neuroscience
IS - 44
ER -