Spike count correlation increases with length of time interval in the presence of trial-to-trial variation
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Updated: Jul 19, 2026

Closed-loop Neuro-robotic Experiments to Test Computational Properties of Neuronal Networks
Published on: March 2, 2015
Robert E Kass1, Valérie Ventura
1kass@stat.cmu.edu
Abstract:
It has been observed that spike count correlation between two simultaneously recorded neurons often increases with the length of time interval examined. Under simple assumptions that are roughly consistent with much experimental data, we show that this phenomenon may be explained as being due to excess trial-to-trial variation. The resulting formula for the correlation is able to predict the observed correlation of two neurons recorded from primary visual cortex as a function of interval length.
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