Spatiotemporal coding in the cortex: information flow-based learning in spiking neural networks

We introduce a learning paradigm for networks of integrate-and-fire spiking neurons that is based on an information-theoretic criterion. This criterion can be viewed as a first principle that demonstrates the experimentally observed fact that cortical neurons display synchronous firing for some stimuli and not for others. The principle can be regarded as the postulation of a nonparametric reconstruction method as optimization criteria for learning the required functional connectivity that justifies and explains synchronous firing for binding of features as a mechanism for spatiotemporal coding. This can be expressed in an information-theoretic way by maximizing the discrimination ability between different sensory inputs in minimal time.