Naturalistic Stimuli Increase the Rate and Efficiency of Information Transmission by Primary Auditory Afferents

Natural sounds, especially communication sounds, have highly structured amplitude and phase spectra. We have quantified how structure in the amplitude spectrum of natural sounds affects coding in primary auditory afferents. Auditory afferents encode stimuli with naturalistic amplitude spectra dramat...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences Biological sciences, 1995-12, Vol.262 (1365), p.259-265
Main Authors: Rieke, F., Bodnar, D. A., Bialek, W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
Afferent Pathways - physiology
Amphibians
Animals
Auditory Pathways - physiology
Auditory system
Electrophysiology
Entropy
Evoked Potentials, Auditory - physiology
Mental stimulation
Noise measurement
Noise spectra
Rana catesbeiana - physiology
Signal noise
Spectral bands
Supernova remnants
Vestibulocochlear Nerve - physiology
Vocalization, Animal - physiology
Waveforms
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:Natural sounds, especially communication sounds, have highly structured amplitude and phase spectra. We have quantified how structure in the amplitude spectrum of natural sounds affects coding in primary auditory afferents. Auditory afferents encode stimuli with naturalistic amplitude spectra dramatically better than broad-band stimuli (approximating white noise); the rate at which the spike train carries information about the stimulus is 2–6 times higher for naturalistic sounds. Furthermore, the information rates can reach 90% of the fundamental limit to information transmission set by the statistics of the spike response. These results indicate that the coding strategy of the auditory nerve is matched to the structure of natural sounds; this ‘tuning’ allows afferent spike trains to provide higher processing centres with a more complete description of the sensory world.
ISSN:0962-8452
1471-2954
DOI:10.1098/rspb.1995.0204