Response variability and stimulus discrimination capacity of neurons in monkey inferior temporal cortex

Single neurons (n = 73) were recorded from the inferior temporal cortex (IT) of an awake macaque monkey, while performing a visual fixation task. Shape stimuli that elicited different responses of the IT neurons, were found to result in different response variances. The response variance vs. mean response relationship of the IT neurons could be described by an analogous function to those found in previous studies of A17 in cats and of V1 in macaques. A comparison of the stimulus discrimination capacities of the individual neurons revealed that neurons which exhibit lower variances can discriminate their preferred and non-preferred shape stimuli more reliably than neurons with higher variances.