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Updated: Jun 15, 2026

A Simple Stimulatory Device for Evoking Point-like Tactile Stimuli: A Searchlight for LFP to Spike Transitions
Published on: March 25, 2014
The structure and size of sensory bursts encode stimulus information but only size affects behavior
Gary Marsat1, Gerald S Pollack
1Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Abstract:
Cricket ultrasound avoidance is a classic model system for neuroethology. Avoidance steering is triggered by high-firing-rate bursts of spikes in the auditory command neuron AN2. Although bursting is common among sensory neurons, and although the detailed structure of bursts may encode information about the stimulus, it is as yet unclear whether this information is decoded. We address this question in two ways: from an information coding point of view, by showing the relationship between stimulus and burst structure; and also from a functional point of view by showing the relationship between burst structure and behavior. We conclude that the burst structure carries detailed temporal information about the stimulus but that this has little impact on the behavioral response, which is affected mainly by burst size.
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