FIGURE 2. Precision is necessary to convey information about visual stimuli.

a, Resulting PSTH as the temporal precision of the LGN spike train is systematically varied. b, Single-spike information I_SS increases without bound with increasing precision. c, Jittering a reconstructed stimulus by t has a greater effect for fine (right) than for coarse (left) stimulus features. d, Jitter affects the reconstruction quality at a relative precision of 1 (bottom), but has negligible influence at a relative precision of 4.5 (middle). The stimulus is scaled such that its variance over time is unity, establishing the scale of the y axis. e, I_REC reveals that response timescales much finer than that of the stimulus (red) are necessary to maximize the neuron's linear representation of the stimulus.