A General Approach to Coding in Early Olfactory and Visual Neural Populations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a general model for neural population codes in olfaction and vision, highlighting shared features like redundancy, identity-based information, and error correction, and predicts further structural properties.

Contribution

The first unified model capturing key features of neural population codes in olfactory and visual systems, enabling investigation of similar structures in other sensory modalities.

Findings

Model demonstrates high redundancy in neural codes

Information is encoded in neuron identity, not timing

Predictions suggest additional structural features in neural populations

Abstract

Recent experimental and theoretical work on neural populations belonging to two separate early sensory systems, olfaction and vision, has challenged the notion that the two operate under different computational paradigms by providing evidence for the respective neural population codes having three central, common features: they are highly redundant; they are organized such that information is carried in the identity, and not the relative timing, of the active neurons; they are capable of error correction. We present the first model that captures these three properties in a general manner, making it possible to investigate whether similar structure is present in other population codes. Our model also makes specific predictions about additional, as yet unseen, structure in such codes. If these predictions are found in real data, this would provide new evidence that such population codes are operating under more general computational principles.