Functional diversity among sensory neurons from efficient coding principles
Fig 1
Neuron model and population coding framework.
A. Framework schematic. A stimulus s from a probability distribution p(s) is encoded by the spiking responses of a population of ON (red) and OFF (blue) cells. We optimize the cells’ nonlinearities by maximizing the mutual information between stimulus and spiking response. B. Each cell is described by a binary response nonlinearity ν with a threshold θ and maximal firing rate νmax. During a coding window of fixed duration T the stimulus is constant and the spike count k is drawn from a Poisson distribution with a mean rate ν. C. When measuring coding efficiency using the mutual information between stimulus and spike count response, the neurons’ thresholds can be interpreted as quantiles of the original stimulus distribution, thus mapping an arbitrary stimulus distribution p(s) into a uniform distribution (four thresholds shown).