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Error-Robust Modes of the Retinal Population Code.

Jason S Prentice¹, Olivier Marre², Mark L Ioffe^1,3

¹Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States of America.

Plos Computational Biology

|November 18, 2016

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Collective activity patterns in the nervous system, like retinal ganglion cells, act as population codewords. These modes robustly represent visual stimuli, suggesting an error-correcting code in neural communication.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Computational Neuroscience
Systems Neuroscience

Background:

Specific population spiking patterns occur more frequently across the nervous system.
These collective activity patterns may function as population codewords or collective modes, carrying information distinct from individual neurons.

Purpose of the Study:

Investigate the phenomenon of population codewords in retinal ganglion cells.
Determine if collective activity patterns in the retina carry distinct information.
Develop a model to analyze population spiking patterns.

Main Methods:

Recorded activity from approximately 150 retinal ganglion cells.
Developed a novel statistical model to decompose population responses into modes.
Predicted the distribution of spiking activity in the ganglion cell population.

Main Results:

The developed model accurately predicted the distribution of spiking activity.
Identified that population modes represent localized visual stimulus features, distinct from single-neuron representations.
Observed that modes form discriminable clusters of activity states.
Found that the same visual stimulus robustly elicited the same mode.

Conclusions:

Collective signaling in retinal ganglion cells utilizes population modes that function as distinct information carriers.
These findings suggest a form of error-correcting code in neural communication within the retina.
This principle of collective signaling may extend to other brain areas beyond the retina.