Biophysical Characterization of Information-Theoretical Spike Train Reconstructions

信息理论尖峰序列重建的生物物理表征

• 批准号: 9412426
• 负责人: Christof Koch
• 金额: $ 20.7万
• 依托单位: California Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1994
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1994-09-15 至 1997-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9412426&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Biophysical; Characterization; Information; Theoretical; Spike

9412426 Koch The goal of this study is to understand how the electrical signals (called spikes) generated by nerve cells encode information. Studying nerve cells that are part of the early visual or auditory pathways in the nervous system provides an opportunity to directly relate visual or auditory stimuli with the trains of spikes generated by these neurons. To understand how the nervous system works it is important to understand how time-varying signals such as the velocity of a moving target in the visual field of an animal is encoded in such spike trains. Another important issue is to understand how information encoded in neuronal spike trains depends on the biophysical properties of the nerve cells, the hardware of the nervous system. This group of investigators will apply methods of information theory, which up to now have been mainly used in the engineering sciences, to estimate the rate, in bits per second, at which nerve cells can transmit information and to understand better the nature of the encoding of time-varying signals in neuronal spike trains. The role of the biophysics of single cells in this information transmission will be investigated by performing realistic computer simulations of nerve cell activity.

这项研究的目的是了解神经细胞产生的电信号（称为尖峰）是如何编码信息的。研究神经系统中早期视觉或听觉通路的神经细胞提供了一个机会，可以直接将视觉或听觉刺激与这些神经元产生的尖峰序列联系起来。为了理解神经系统是如何工作的，重要的是要理解时变信号，如动物视野中移动目标的速度是如何被编码在这种尖峰序列中的。另一个重要的问题是理解在神经元尖峰序列中编码的信息如何依赖于神经细胞（神经系统的硬件）的生物物理特性。这组研究人员将运用信息论的方法来估计神经细胞传输信息的速率（以比特/秒为单位），并更好地理解神经元尖峰序列中时变信号的编码性质。到目前为止，信息论主要用于工程科学。单细胞的生物物理在这种信息传递中的作用将通过对神经细胞活动进行逼真的计算机模拟来研究。