Neural Coding

• What is a receptive field in visual and auditory cortices? How are they built by the nervous system? What is a non-classical receptive field? What could be its computational significance?
• Provide at least one detailed example of hierarchical and parallel processing in the nervous system.
• What is a ``place code"? Describe at least one such place code in the nervous system and its underlying mechanisms.
• Features of the environment appear to be coded in two different ways: either using a Gaussian-type of response (e.g. auditory frequency or binocular disparity turning) or via a sigmoidal type of response (e.g. contrast). Give examples and discuss.
• What do you know about population coding in subcortical (e.g. superior colliculus) or cortical structures? Why would the nervous system use population rather than single cell coding? How would cross-correlation among cells affect this?
• What do you know about information coding in the nervous system? What are some of the different ways in which information could be encoded in spike trains? Can you tell us of one experiment in which this has been done. What are the (dis)-advantages of these different methods with respect to robustness and accuracy?

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