Principles of Neural Representaion Flashcards
How do neuroscientists define representation?
The way different kinds ofinformation are transmitted in the activity of neurons or groups of neurons
How does Vilarroyal 2017 define representation?
A neural representation is a pattern of neural activity that stands for some environmental feature in the internal workings of the brain
What is processing?
Systematically transforming one pattern of activity into another
How is a neuron compared to a detector?
It integrates information from a variety of sources, and sends a signal reflecting the degree to which the inputs match some pattern
What do extracellular single unit recordings measure?
Electrical activity generated by individual neurons near the tip of a metal electrode
How do you interpret a raster plot?
Each dot represents a spike
Each row is an experimental trial
What is a head-direction cell?
- Found in the post-speculum of the rat
- Represents the direction that the rats head is facing
What are the limits of the detector analogy?
- Does the detector idea require a unique neuron for every conceivable percept, concept, or action?
- Ambiguity in the firing rate of an individual neuron
What proportion of stimuli given to a MTL neuron will make it fire?
0.54% of possible stimuli
What is a MTL neuron?
Medial Temporal Lobe Neuron
What does it mean if a neuron response is highly invariant?
The responses are not sensitive to superficial variations (pose, lighting, etc)
Why are broad tunings useful?
Why are broad tunings useful?
- They mean that the cell can communicate some useful info, even when the conditions it is detecting are not met precisely
- Make it possible to generalise
The firing rate of a neuron can…?
- Signal a degree of match between the current input and its ‘preferred value’
- Be interpreted as the probability the particular stimulus is present, the degree to which something appears to be true, or some action is intended
How does considering an additional neuron resolve some of the ambiguity?
The neurons will have different preferred values and so different firing patterns and so we can distinguish between those different stimulus values
Why can similar patterns be useful?
Processed in a similar way - generalisation
Why can similar patterns be problematic?
May be difficult to distinguish patterns that need different processing
What is coarse coding?
Each neuron represents a range of the possible input values
How are accurate estimates of coded information reconstructed?
By pooling info from different neurons, e.g. by taking a firing weighted average of the preferred values of each neuron
How do we show that we understand a code?
By decoding it
How do we show that we understand a code?
By decoding it
What is the first neural system that encodes colour?
Retina
How are non-spectral colours represented?
Combinations - represented as distinct patterns