Fig. 3: Quantitative analysis of the ability of neural populations to extract temporal information.

a Average firing rates during early (magenta) and late (blue) blank trials. Each circle represents one session, solid rectangles are averages over sessions (n = 40, P = 0.265, two-sided Wilcoxon signed rank test). b (left) Cartoon illustrating the shifting of the blank spike train interval with respect to the laser spike train. Correlation with laser trials was computed by using blank firing rates starting at the same time as the cue (zero time lag) or shifted at various times before/after cue. (right) Mean correlation coefficient at different time lags between laser-blank trials for various groups of trials (moving averages) from early to late trials (n = 40). See also Supplementary Fig. 9. c Late trials correlation coefficient for the population responses (blue, n = 40), compared with the mean correlation coefficient of single cells responses (green, N = 394) and shuffled single cells responses (orange, N = 394). The correlation coefficient for individual cells is significantly different relative to the entire population (P = 4.82e-14, two-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum test) and shuffled condition (P = 0.0005, two-sided Wilcoxon signed rank test). See also Supplementary Fig. 10. d Laser-blank correlation coefficient at different time lags (blank trials shifted at various times before/after cue – see panel b) for the population responses (blue, n = 40) and single cells (average, green, N = 394). e (top) Cartoon illustrating trial structure for sessions with a delayed visual cue with respect to the onset of the laser pulses. (bottom) No increase in the correlation coefficient if the visual cue is delayed by 700–1000 ms with respect to the onset of the laser pulses (n = 28 sessions). Error bars or envelopes in all panels represent s.e.m.