| |
|
9. Intro - Information processing in living organisms |
| |
9.1. Biological Neural Systems
| |
9.1.2. The Second Generation of Models |
|
Another possibility is that the number of spikes per second
(called the firing rate) encodes relevant information.
This idea lead to a model neuron known as sigmoidal
gate.
Firing Rates versus Spike Timing
The human nervous system is able to perform complex
visual tasks in time intervals as short as 150–ms.
The pathway from the retina to higher areas in the neocortex
along which a visual stimuli is processed consists of about
10 "processing stages". Further experimental results
indicate that some biological neural systems indeed use the
exact timing of individual spikes which further confirms the
idea that the firing rate alone does not carry all the relevant
information.
Source:
Networks of Spiking Neurons: A New Generation of Neural Network Models, Thomas Natschläger, December 1998 
