A Theoretical Study of Serial Correlation of Spike Trains in A Second Order Neuron
Y. Jokinen, Erkki Oja · International Journal of Neuroscience · 1972
Commonly, it is considered that in the nervous system the main bulk of information is coded in trains of action potentials so that information transfer is independent of the order of inter-spike intervals. Although the significance of the orderliness of events has been pointed out in many theoretical considerations of information transfer (Barlow, 1963; Bergstrom, 1969, 1972), direct empirical evidence in support of this concept has been difficult to obtain. As exceptions may be considered sensory signals elicited by periodic stimuli (Mountcastle et al., 1969). The question whether such properties of spike trains as described here contribute at all to the transfer of information in CNS remains open. It might be difficult to measure any relevant information code in a spike train with such a complicated and sensitive statistic as the serial correlogram. on the other hand, it seems justified to use serial correlation in selected cases in order to explore the functional structure of the neural pathways studied.