Neural coding
method by which information is represented in the brain
Neural coding (or neural representation) refers to the relationship between a stimulus and its respective neuronal responses, and the signalling relationships among networks of neurons in an ensemble. Action potentials, which act as the primary carrier of information in biological neural networks, are generally uniform regardless of the type of stimulus or the specific type of neuron. The simplicity of action potentials as a methodology of encoding information factored with the indiscriminate process of summation is seen as discontiguous with the specification capacity that neurons demonstrate at the presynaptic terminal, as well as the broad ability for complex neuronal processing and regional specialisation for which the brain-wide integration of such is seen as fundamental to complex derivations; such as intelligence, consciousness, complex social interaction, reasoning and motivation.
As such, theoretical frameworks that describe encoding mechanisms of action potential sequences in relationship to observed patterns are seen as fundamental to neuroscientific understanding.
Overview
Neurons have an ability uncommon among the cells of the body to propagate signals rapidly over large distances by generating characteristic electrical pulses called action potentials: voltage spikes that can travel down axons. Sensory neurons change their activities by firing sequences of action potentials in various temporal patterns, with the presence of external sensory stimuli, such as light, sound, taste, smell and touch. Information about the stimulus is encoded in this pattern of action potentials and transmitted into and around the brain. Beyond this, specialized neurons, such as those of the retina, can communicate more information through graded potentials. These differ from action potentials because information about the strength of a stimulus directly correlates with the strength of the neurons' output. The signal decays much faster for graded potentials, necessitating short inter-neuron distances and high neuronal density.
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This entry incorporates text from “Neural coding” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.