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Focused Review ARTICLE

Bursts generate a non-reducible spike-pattern code

Hugo G. Eyherabide^1,2, Ariel Rokem^1,3, Andreas V. M. Herz^1,4 and Inés Samengo^1,2*

Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience and Institute for Theoretical Biology, Department of Biology, Humboldt Universität, Berlin, Germany

Centro Atómico Bariloche and Instituto Balseiro, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina

Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience and Division of Neurobiology, Department of Biology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany

At the single-neuron level, precisely timed spikes can either constitute firing-rate codes or spike-pattern codes that utilize the relative timing between consecutive spikes. There has been little experimental support for the hypothesis that such temporal patterns contribute substantially to information transmission. By using grasshopper auditory receptors as a model system, we show that correlations between spikes can be used to represent behaviorally relevant stimuli. The correlations reflect the inner structure of the spike train: a succession of burst-like patterns. We demonstrate that bursts with different spike counts encode different stimulus features, such that about 20% of the transmitted information corresponds to discriminating between different features, and the remaining 80% is used to allocate these features in time. In this spike-pattern code, the what and the when of the stimuli are encoded in the duration of each burst and the time of burst onset, respectively. Given the ubiquity of burst firing, we expect similar findings also for other neural systems.

Keywords:

burst spiking, neural code, sensory encoding, information theory, auditory receptor

Citation:

Eyherabide HG, Rokem A, Herz AVM and Samengo I (2009). Bursts generate a non-reducible spike-pattern code. Front. Neurosci. 3:1. doi: 10.3389/neuro.01.002.2009

Received:

01 February 2009;

Paper pending published:

14 February 2009;

Accepted:

21 February 2009;

Published online:

01 May 2009.

Edited by:

Misha Tsodyks, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

Reviewed by:

Israel Nelken, Hebrew University, Israel
John Lisman, Brandeis University, USA

© 2009 Eyherabide, Rokem, Herz and Samengo. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.

*Correspondence:

Inés Samengo, Centro Atómico Bariloche San Carlos de Bariloche, (8400), Río Negro, Argentina. Tel: ++ 54 2944 445100 (int: 5391 / 5345). Fax: ++54 2944 445299. Email: samengo@cab.cnea.gov.ar