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Abstract:
The relationship between a neuron's refractory period and the
precision of its response to identical stimuli was investigated.
The light response of retinal ganglion cells was modeled as
probabilistic firing combined with a refractory period: the
instantaneous firing rate is the product of a "free firing rate",
which depends only on the stimulus, and a "recovery function",
which depends only on the time since the last spike. In
simulations, longer refractory periods were found to make the
response more reproducible, eventually matching the precision of
measured ganglion cell spike trains. The underlying free firing
rate derived in this way often exceeded the observed firing rate by
an order of magnitude, and was found to convey information about
the stimulus over a much wider dynamic range. Thus the free firing
rate may be the preferred variable for describing a spiking
neuron's response.
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