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Summary: Ruling out and ruling in neural codes
Adam L. Jacobsa
, Gene Fridmanb
, Robert M. Douglasc
, Nazia M. Alama
, Peter. E. Lathamd
, Glen T. Pruskya
,
and Sheila Nirenberga,1
aDepartment of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY 10065; bDepartment of Neurobiology, University of
California, Los Angeles, CA 90095; cDepartment of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V5Z 3N9;
and dGatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College of London, London WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom
Communicated by David W. McLaughlin, New York University, New York, NY, January 16, 2009 (received for review September 2, 2008)
The subject of neural coding has generated much debate. A key
issue is whether the nervous system uses coarse or fine coding.
Each has different strengths and weaknesses and, therefore, dif-
ferent implications for how the brain computes. For example, the
strength of coarse coding is that it is robust to fluctuations in spike
arrival times; downstream neurons do not have to keep track of the
details of the spike train. The weakness, though, is that individual
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