HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Comput. Neurosci.
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fncom.2025.1571109
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancements in Neural Coding: Sensory Perception and Multiplexed Encoding StrategiesView all articles
Survey of Temporal Coding of Sensory Information
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hearing Research Center, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States
- 2Harvard Medical School, Boston, United States
- 3Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
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Here we present evidence for the ubiquity of fine spike timing and temporal coding broadly observed across sensory systems and widely conserved across diverse phyla, spanning invertebrates and vertebrates. A taxonomy of basic neural coding types includes channel activation patterns, temporal patterns of spikes, and patterns of spike latencies. Various examples and types of combination temporal-channel codes are discussed, including firing sequence codes. Multiplexing of temporal codes and mixed channel-temporal codes are considered. Neurophysiological and perceptual evidence for temporal coding in many sensory modalities is surveyed: audition, mechanoreception, electroreception, vision, gustation, olfaction, cutaneous senses, proprioception, and the vestibular sense. Precise phase-locked, phase-triggered, and spike latency codes can be found in many sensory systems. Temporal resolutions on millisecond and submillisecond scales are common. General correlation-based representations and operations are discussed. In almost every modality, there is some role for temporal coding, often in surprising places, such as color vision and taste. More investigations into temporal coding are well-warranted.
Keywords: Advancements in Neural Coding: Sensory Perception and Multiplexed Encoding Strategies Temporal coding, multiplexing, phase-locking, Neural coding, Sensory coding, spike latency, Perception
Received: 04 Feb 2025; Accepted: 04 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cariani and Baker. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Peter Cariani, Hearing Research Center, Boston University, Boston, 02460, MA, United States
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