Functional diversity among sensory neurons from efficient coding principles
Fig 4
Optimal linear decoding of stimuli with noise depends on the ON/OFF mixture.
A. The MSE as a function of the fraction of OFF cells in the population, α, for a different expected spike count, R. The MSE was normalized to the MSE for the homogeneous population of all ON cells. The MSE is shown for N = 100 cells and for the Laplace distribution. Symbols indicate the MSE values realized with the thresholds in B and C. B. The optimal thresholds for the homogeneous population (black) partition the Laplace stimulus distribution starting with a much larger first threshold than the mixed population with 2/3 OFF cells (blue) and 1/3 ON cells (red). C. The optimal thresholds for the Laplace distribution for a homogeneous population (black) and a mixed population with 2/3 OFF cells (blue) and 1/3 ON cells (red). In B and C, R = 1. Note the difference in the optimal threshold distribution between the mixed ON/OFF and the homogeneous ON population, especially for small x = i/N (logarithmic in blue vs. linear in black).