Independent and Redundant Information in Nearby Cortical Neurons

• DOI: 10.1126/science.1065839
• Publication Date: 2002-07-27T09:47:15Z
• Authors: Daniel S. Reich; Ferenc Mechler; Jonathan D. Victor
• Keywords: Cortical neurons; Stimulus (psychology); Spike train

In the primary visual cortex (V1), nearby neurons are tuned to similar stimulus features, and, depending on manner and time scale over which neuronal signals analyzed, resulting redundancy may mitigate deleterious effects of response variability. We estimated information rates in short–time responses clusters up six simultaneously recorded monkey V1. Responses were almost independent if we kept track neuron fired each spike but redundant summed cluster. Redundancy was cluster size. Summing reduce variability discards potentially useful information, discarded increases with