Access

News and Views

Nature 439, 920-921 (23 February 2006) | doi:10.1038/439920a; Published online 22 February 2006

Open Innovation Challenges

naturejobs

Neurobiology: Efficiency measures

Michael R. DeWeese1 & Anthony Zador1

Top

The nervous system translates sensory information into electrical impulses. The neural 'code' involved seems to represent natural sounds and images efficiently, using the smallest number of impulses.

Our perception of the outside world relies on the transformation of physical signals (such as light and sound) into a pattern of neural impulses, or spikes. These spikes are then transmitted to higher brain regions, where they are further transformed into other patterns of sensory spikes, and ultimately into the motor spikes that mediate behaviour.

  1. Michael R. DeWeese and Anthony Zador are in the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1 Bungtown Road, Cold Spring Harbor, New York 11724, USA.
    Email: deweese@phage.cshl.org;
    Email: zador@cshl.org

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.

RESEARCH

Sodium pumps adapt spike bursting to stimulus statistics

Nature Neuroscience Article (01 Nov 2007)