Informatics of spike trains in neuronal ensemble

Information-is encoded in the spike trains of neurons in the brain. However, the distribution of information is not uniform over time in a spike train, nor is information carried by neurons individually. Here, based on Receiver-Operating-Characteristics (ROC), the authors developed a method to evaluate the information carried in the spike trains of ensembles of neurons in different time windows across different time scales, While we found that different types of information is carried in different time windows, and in general, including more neurons in the analysis increases the amount of information, but the ratio of the increment decreases with each addition.