Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Advertisement

Nature Precedings
  • View all journals
  • Search
  • My Account Login
  • Explore content
  • About the journal
  • RSS feed
  1. nature
  2. nature precedings
  3. articles
  4. article
The effect of noise correlations in populations of diversely tuned neurons
Download PDF
Download PDF
  • Manuscript
  • Open Access
  • Published: 01 August 2011

The effect of noise correlations in populations of diversely tuned neurons

  • Alexander Ecker1,
  • Philipp Berens1,
  • Andreas Tolias2 &
  • …
  • Matthias Bethge1 

Nature Precedings (2011)Cite this article

  • 1067 Accesses

  • 1 Citations

  • Metrics details

Abstract

The amount of information encoded by networks of neurons critically depends on the correlation structure of their activity. Neurons with similar stimulus preferences tend to have higher noise correlations than others. In homogeneous populations of neurons this limited range correlation structure is highly detrimental to the accuracy of a population code. Therefore, reduced spike count correlations under attention, after adaptation or after learning have been interpreted as evidence for a more efficient population code. Here we analyze the role of limited range correlations in more realistic, heterogeneous population models. We use Fisher information and maximum likelihood decoding to show that reduced correlations do not necessarily improve encoding accuracy. In fact, in populations with more than a few hundred neurons, increasing the level of limited range correlations can substantially improve encoding accuracy. We found that this improvement results from a decrease in noise entropy that is associated with increasing correlations if the marginal distributions are unchanged. Surprisingly, for constant noise entropy and in the limit of large populations the encoding accuracy is independent of both structure and magnitude of noise correlations.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany

    Alexander Ecker, Philipp Berens & Matthias Bethge

  2. Baylor College of Neuroscience, Houston, TX, USA

    Andreas Tolias

Authors
  1. Alexander Ecker
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Philipp Berens
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Andreas Tolias
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Matthias Bethge
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexander Ecker.

Rights and permissions

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Ecker, A., Berens, P., Tolias, A. et al. The effect of noise correlations in populations of diversely tuned neurons. Nat Prec (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/npre.2011.6170.1

Download citation

  • Received: 29 July 2011

  • Accepted: 01 August 2011

  • Published: 01 August 2011

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/npre.2011.6170.1

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Keywords

  • Noise Correlation
  • Fisher information
  • population coding
  • Limited range correlations
  • Heterogeneity

This article is cited by

  • Noise correlations in neural ensemble activity limit the accuracy of hippocampal spatial representations

    • Omer Hazon
    • Victor H. Minces
    • Pablo E. Jercog

    Nature Communications (2022)

Download PDF

Advertisement

Explore content

  • Research articles
  • News & Comment
  • RSS feed

About the journal

  • Journal Information

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

  • Explore articles by subject
  • Find a job
  • Guide to authors
  • Editorial policies

Nature Precedings (Nat Preced)

nature.com sitemap

About Nature Portfolio

  • About us
  • Press releases
  • Press office
  • Contact us

Discover content

  • Journals A-Z
  • Articles by subject
  • Nano
  • Protocol Exchange
  • Nature Index

Publishing policies

  • Nature portfolio policies
  • Open access

Author & Researcher services

  • Reprints & permissions
  • Research data
  • Language editing
  • Scientific editing
  • Nature Masterclasses
  • Live Expert Trainer-led workshops
  • Research Solutions

Libraries & institutions

  • Librarian service & tools
  • Librarian portal
  • Open research
  • Recommend to library

Advertising & partnerships

  • Advertising
  • Partnerships & Services
  • Media kits
  • Branded content

Career development

  • Nature Careers
  • Nature Conferences
  • Nature events

Regional websites

  • Nature Africa
  • Nature China
  • Nature India
  • Nature Italy
  • Nature Japan
  • Nature Korea
  • Nature Middle East
  • Privacy Policy
  • Use of cookies
  • Legal notice
  • Accessibility statement
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Your US state privacy rights
Springer Nature

© 2023 Springer Nature Limited

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing