Electrosensory neural responses to natural electro-communication stimuli are distributed along a continuum

Neural heterogeneities are seen ubiquitously within the brain and greatly complicate classification efforts. Here we tested whether the responses of an anatomically well-characterized sensory neuron population to natural stimuli could be used for functional classification. To do so, we recorded from...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2017-04, Vol.12 (4), p.e0175322-e0175322
Main Authors: Sproule, Michael K J, Chacron, Maurice J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Action Potentials
Animals
Biology and Life Sciences
Black ghost
Brain
Cell Communication
Classification
Clusters
Coding
Communication
Computer and Information Sciences
Electric fields
Electric Fish - physiology
Electric instruments
Electric Stimulation
Electrosensory system
Lateral line
Medicine and Health Sciences
Morphology
Neural coding
Neural networks
Neurons
Neurophysiology
Neurosciences
Physical Sciences
Physiology
Pyramidal cells
Pyramidal Cells - physiology
Research and Analysis Methods
Sensory receptors
Skin
Stimuli
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Neural heterogeneities are seen ubiquitously within the brain and greatly complicate classification efforts. Here we tested whether the responses of an anatomically well-characterized sensory neuron population to natural stimuli could be used for functional classification. To do so, we recorded from pyramidal cells within the electrosensory lateral line lobe (ELL) of the weakly electric fish Apteronotus leptorhynchus in response to natural electro-communication stimuli as these cells can be anatomically classified into six different types. We then used two independent methodologies to functionally classify responses: one relies of reducing the dimensionality of a feature space while the other directly compares the responses themselves. Both methodologies gave rise to qualitatively similar results: while ON and OFF-type cells could easily be distinguished from one another, ELL pyramidal neuron responses are actually distributed along a continuum rather than forming distinct clusters due to heterogeneities. We discuss the implications of our results for neural coding and highlight some potential advantages.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0175322