ArticleJournal of neurophysiology2011
Sparse and dense coding of natural stimuli by distinct midbrain neuron subpopulations in weakly electric fish.
Article in Journal of neurophysiology, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 50 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
50 citing papers in PubMed, 83 citations in OpenAlex.
- Toward model-guided electrophysiology-Encoding of chirps in the electrosensory periphery ofFrontiers in computational neuroscience · 2026Article
- Spatial coding of conspecifics in the electrosensory system: Early segregation of information streams.PloS one · 2026Article
- An end-to-end model of active electrosensation.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Burst firing optimizes invariant coding of natural communication signals by electrosensory neural populations.iScience · 2025Article
- Electrosensory midbrain neurons optimally decode ascending input during object localization.The Journal of physiology · 2025Article
- Nonresponsive Neurons Improve Population Coding of Object Location.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Differential expression of steroid-related genes across electrosensory brain regions in two sexually dimorphic species of electric knifefish.General and comparative endocrinology · 2024Review
- Article
- Neuroendocrine mechanisms contributing to the coevolution of sociality and communication.Frontiers in neuroendocrinology · 2023Review
- Synergistic population coding of natural communication stimuli by hindbrain electrosensory neurons.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Population Coding of Natural Electrosensory Stimuli by Midbrain Neurons.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2021Article
- Auditory processing in the zebra finch midbrain: single unit responses and effect of rearing experience.PeerJ · 2020Article
- Neural Synchrony Gives Rise to Amplitude- and Duration-Invariant Encoding Consistent With Perception of Natural Communication Stimuli.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2020Article
- Article
- Encoding and Perception of Electro-communication Signals inFrontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2019Review
- Novel Functions of Feedback in Electrosensory Processing.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2019Article
- Statistics of Natural Communication Signals Observed in the Wild Identify Important Yet Neglected Stimulus Regimes in Weakly Electric Fish.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2018Article
- Descending pathways generate perception of and neural responses to weak sensory input.PLoS biology · 2018Article
- Physiological evidence of sensory integration in the electrosensory lateral line lobe of Gnathonemus petersii.PloS one · 2018Article
- Population Coding and Correlated Variability in Electrosensory Pathways.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
While peripheral sensory neurons respond to natural stimuli with a broad range of spatiotemporal frequencies, central neurons instead respond sparsely to specific features in general. The nonlinear transformations leading to this emergent selectivity are not well understood. Here we characterized how the neural representation of stimuli changes across successive brain areas, using the electrosensory system of weakly electric fish as a model system. We found that midbrain torus semicircularis (TS) neurons were on average more selective in their responses than hindbrain electrosensory lateral line lobe (ELL) neurons. Further analysis revealed two categories of TS neurons: dense coding TS neurons that were ELL-like and sparse coding TS neurons that displayed selective responses. These neurons in general responded to preferred stimuli with few spikes and were mostly silent for other stimuli. We further investigated whether information about stimulus attributes was contained in the activities of ELL and TS neurons. To do so, we used a spike train metric to quantify how well stimuli could be discriminated based on spiking responses. We found that sparse coding TS neurons performed poorly even when their activities were combined compared with ELL and dense coding TS neurons. In contrast, combining the activities of as few as 12 dense coding TS neurons could lead to optimal discrimination. On the other hand, sparse coding TS neurons were better detectors of whether their preferred stimulus occurred compared with either dense coding TS or ELL neurons. Our results therefore suggest that the TS implements parallel detection and estimation of sensory input.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.