“The sensory-triggered activity of a neuron is typically characterized in terms of a tuning curve, which describes the neuron’s average response as a function of a parameter that characterizes a physical stimulus. What determines the shapes of tuning curves in a neuronal population?”

Optimal Tuning Curves for Four Classes of Downstream Functions

by Emilio Salinas
Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA


Previous theoretical studies and related experiments does not explain the two general types of tuning profiles that are commonly observed: unimodal and monotonic.
The author suggest that optimal sensory tuning curves are shaped not only by stimulus statistics and signal-to-noise properties, but also according to their impact on downstream neural circuits and, ultimately, on behavior.
You may access the full published version, which is freely available here
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Salinas E (2006) How behavioral constraints may determine optimal sensory representations. PLoS Biol 4(12): e387. DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040387

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