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 Experiments support alternative theory of information processing in the cortex

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Date posted: 18/10/2008

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory neuroscientists have demonstrated that "spike timing" in cortical neurons can influence behavior even at minuscule time intervals, more precisely than previously imagined.

Experiments focusing on the auditory cortex revealed that animals in the midst of decision-making have the ability to distinguish incoming signals separated by as little as three milliseconds.

The new data suggest that the neural code might actually be a timing code, where information is encoded within the precise pattern of spiking, not in the spiking rate of the neuron.

The group's discovery helps make the case for an alternate theory of how the brain processes information. Neuroscientists have made vast leaps in understanding how neurons communicate with each other in the brain. But they are still in the dark about what the neuron-to-neuron message actually consists of and how it's processed. Known as the "neural code," this blueprint for the brain's information-processing language has proved to be much more elusive than language that is encoded in our genome, which was deciphered decades ago.

Professor Anthony Zador, Ph.D., leader of the team, said, "If lots of people are talking within each department in a company, you might get a good idea of what's going on in the company by just measuring how loudly people are talking within a given department, which is what the classical 'rate' model predicts,"

But as Zador also observes, conversation is not just about loudness; it's also about the identity of the speakers, their speech patterns, etc. "Our results demonstrate directly that there is more to this 'office' than just how loudly people are talking, and motivate us to try to figure out what that extra dimension is," he says. He and his CSHL team will continue to probe for the answers as their work on this and related mysteries about neural communication continues.

See the full Story via external site: www.physorg.com



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