Temporal coding as a means of information transfer in the primate visual system

The issue of how neurons communicate with each other through patterns of action potentials, that is, of what is the neural code, is one of the major problems in modern science. Because complex stimuli can be easily and rapidly presented to the visual system, and because vision is both behaviorally important to and occupies a large amount of neural tissue in humans, a great deal of the research on the neuronal code has been done in the primate visual system. One of the more challenging aspects of this research concerns how the time-varying nature of neuronal responses might be used by the nervous system. This review addresses some of the major lines of investigation as to how the temporal variation of a neural response might function in transferring information in the primate visual system.