A Novel Spike Distance

Rossum, Mark C. W. van

doi:10.1162/089976601300014321

Cited by 499 publications

(405 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…2d). Alternative measures to determine the difference between spike trains, such as the Victor-Purpura metric 137 or the van-Rossum metric 138 , can be converted to a similarity measure that is suitable for a reliability analysis.…”

Section: Indirect Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regulation of spike timing in visual cortical circuits

2008

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A train of action potentials (a spike train) can carry information in both the average firing rate and the pattern of spikes in the train. But can such a spike-pattern code be supported by cortical circuits? Neurons in vitro produce a spike pattern in response to the injection of a fluctuating current. However, cortical neurons in vivo are modulated by local oscillatory neuronal activity and by top-down inputs. In a cortical circuit, precise spike patterns thus reflect the interaction between internally generated activity and sensory information encoded by input spike trains. We review the evidence for precise and reliable spike timing in the cortex and discuss its computational role.Reliability and precision are two different quantities. When you make an appointment with your friend, she can either keep the appointment or not show up at all. If she does show up, she might or might not be on time. The former uncertainty is related to reliability, whereas the latter is related to precision. When the same stimulus waveform is repeatedly injected at the soma of a neuron in vitro (FIG. 1a), a similar spike train is obtained on each trial 1,2 (FIG. 1b). When approximately the same number of spikes occur on each trial the neuron is said to be reliable, whereas when the spikes occur almost at the same time across trials it is said to be precise (FIG. 1c). For a single neuron, the potential information content of precise and reliable spike times is many times larger than that which is contained in the firing rate, which is averaged across a typical interval of a hundred milliseconds [3][4][5][6] . The information contained in spike timing is available immediately, rather than after an averaging period. Furthermore, the timing of patterns of spikes can potentially transmit even more information than the timing of the individual constituent spikes 3,7 . The potential relevance of spike patterns becomes apparent when we consider neurons at the population level: when a group of similar neurons (a 'pool') produces precise and reliable spike trains, the neurons they project to receive volleys of synchronous spikes 8,9 . This opens up the possibility of communicating between different cortical areas through synchronous spike volleys.In contrast to the in vitro situation described above, in the intact cortex most excitatory synaptic inputs arrive at the dendrites rather than at the soma (FIG. 1d), and synaptic transmission is typically unreliable [10][11][12][13] . Furthermore, most of these dendritic inputs are not directly related to ongoing sensory stimulation; rather, they reflect spatiotemporally structured internal activity. Therefore, when the same stimulus is presented repeatedly, the resulting spike trains are usually neither precise nor reliable when they are aligned to the stimulus onset 6 . Instead, HHMI Author ManuscriptHHMI Author Manuscript HHMI Author Manuscript neural activity in vivo might be dominated by internally generated complex reverberations or rhythmic oscillations, and precise and reliable sp...

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Section: Indirect Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regulation of spike timing in visual cortical circuits

2008

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“…We here describe two spike train distances, D V proposed by Victor and Purpura (1996), D R by van Rossum (2001), and a dissimilarity measure D S based on the correlation-based spike train similarity measure proposed by Schreiber et al (2003). We furthermore describe the calculation of a spike train distance D B based on binning (Schnupp et al, 2006).…”

Section: Spike Train Distancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second spike train distance studied here was introduced by van Rossum (2001). This distance operates on continuous signals obtained by convolution of the spike trains with a truncated exponential function:…”

Section: Van Rossum Distance D Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A wide variety of methods have been applied to quantify the similarity between spike trains (e. g. Mainen and Sejnowski, 1995;Victor and Purpura, 1996;Hunter et al, 1998;van Rossum, 2001;Schreiber et al, 2003;Kreuz et al, 2007). A particular class of measures designed to study the neural code are time scale parametric spike train distances, mainly represented by the distances proposed by Victor and Purpura (1996) and van Rossum (2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A particular class of measures designed to study the neural code are time scale parametric spike train distances, mainly represented by the distances proposed by Victor and Purpura (1996) and van Rossum (2001). These spike train distances have in common that they depend on some parameter τ that determines the temporal scales in the spike trains to which the distance is sensitive.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

What can spike train distances tell us about the neural code?

Chicharro

Kreuz

Andrzejak

2011

Journal of Neuroscience Methods

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Time scale parametric spike train distances like the Victor and the van Rossum distances are often applied to study the neural code based on neural stimuli discrimination. Different neural coding hypotheses, such as rate or coincidence coding, can be assessed by combining a time scale parametric spike train distance with a classifier in order to obtain the optimal discrimination performance. The time scale for which the responses to different stimuli are distinguished best is assumed to be the discriminative precision of the neural code. The relevance of temporal coding is evaluated by comparing the optimal discrimination performance with the one achieved when assuming a rate code.We here characterize the measures quantifying the discrimination performance, the discriminative precision, and the relevance of temporal coding. Furthermore, we evaluate the information these quantities provide about the neural code. We show that the discriminative precision is too unspecific to be interpreted in terms of the time scales relevant for encoding. Accordingly, the time scale parametric nature of the distances is mainly an advantage because it allows maximizing the discrimination performance across a whole set of measures with different sensitivities determined by the time scale parameter, but not due to the possibility to examine the temporal properties of the neural code.

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Measures of Spike Train Synchrony: From Single Neurons to Populations

Houghton

Kreuz

2013

Multiscale Analysis and Nonlinear Dynamics

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A Novel Spike Distance

Cited by 499 publications

References 10 publications

Regulation of spike timing in visual cortical circuits

Regulation of spike timing in visual cortical circuits

What can spike train distances tell us about the neural code?

Measures of Spike Train Synchrony: From Single Neurons to Populations

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