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Neural coding

Time for a song

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 16, page 65 (2015)Cite this article

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The fine temporal pattern of spiking has been shown to have an important role in encoding information in sensory systems, but it is unclear whether such temporal coding is used by the forebrain motor network in motor control. Here, the authors analysed different renditions of song syllables from songbirds and their corresponding spike trains in the vocal motor area RA. They found that, on a millisecond timescale, the temporal pattern of spikes conveyed considerably more information about vocal behaviour than did the number of spikes, indicating the importance of temporal coding in this system.

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References

  1. Tang, C. et al. Millisecond-scale motor encoding in a cortical vocal area. PLoS Biol. 12, e1002018 (2014)

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  1. Darran Yates
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Yates, D. Time for a song. Nat Rev Neurosci 16, 65 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3903

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