CODING OF TIME-VARYING ELECTRIC FIELD AMPLITUDE MODULATIONS IN A WAVE-TYPE
ELECTRIC FISH.
Wessel, Ralf, Christof Koch, and Fabrizio Gabbiani.
Neurobiology Unit, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of
California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0202 and Computation and Neural
Systems Program, 139-74, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA
91125.
APStracts 2:0009N, 1996.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
1. The coding of time-varying electric fields in the weakly electric fish,
Eigenmannia , was investigated in a quantitative manner. The activity of
single P-type electroreceptor afferents was recorded while the amplitude of an
externally applied sinusoidal electric field was stochastically modulated. The
amplitude modulation waveform (i.e., the stimulus) was reconstructed from the
spike trains by mean square estimation. 2. From the stimulus and the
reconstructions we calculated: (i) the signal-to-noise ratio and thus an
effective temporal bandwidth of the units, (ii) the coding fraction, i.e., a
measure of the fraction of the time-varying stimulus encoded in single spike
trains, and (iii) the mutual information provided by the reconstructions about
the stimulus. 3. Signal-to-noise ratios as high as 7:1 were observed and the
bandwidth ranged from 0 up to 200 Hz, consistent with the limit imposed by the
sampling theorem. Reducing the cut-off frequency of the stimulus increased the
signal-to-noise ratio at low frequencies, indicating a non-linearity in the
receptors' response. 4. The coding fraction and the rate of mutual information
transmission increased in parallel with the standard deviation (i.e., the
contrast) of the stimulus as well as the mean firing rate of the units.
Significant encoding occured 20-40 Hz above the spontaneous discharge of a
unit. 5. When the temporal cut-off frequency of the stimulus was increased
between 80 and 400 Hz , (i) the coding fraction decreased, (ii) the rate of
mutual information transmission remained constant over the same frequency
range and (iii) the reconstructed filter changed. This is in agreement with
predictions obtained in a simplified neuronal model (Gabbiani and Koch 1996).
6. Our results suggest that: (i) the information transmitted by single spike
trains of primary electrosensory afferents to higher order neurons in the fish
brain depends on the contrast and the cut-off frequency of the stimulus as
well as on the mean firing rate of the units. (ii) Under optimal conditions,
more than half of the information about a Gaussian stimulus that can in
principle be encoded is carried in single spike trains of P-type afferents at
rates up to 200 bits per second.
Received 21 September 1995; accepted in final form 27 December 1995.
APS Manuscript Number J632-5.
Article publication pending J. Neurophysiol.
ISSN 1080-4757 Copyright 1996 The American Physiological Society.
Published in APStracts on 22 January 96