Speaker:Priscilla E. Greenwood (Cindy),
Dept, of Mathematics and Statistics ,
Arizona State University

Title:Using Fisher Information to Identify the Optimal Signal in Neuronal Models

A natural measure of the dependence on a stimulus of the firing rate of a neuron is the inverse of the mean inter-spike interval, or "transfer function", e.g. the logistic function. Its steepest region has been taken to indicate the interval where the neuron is most sensitive to an increment of stimulation.
However the transfer function does not take into account how the signal is processed to produce a spike train. We introduce a stochastic model and use Fisher information as a tool to locate the optimal signal for information transfer.This is joint work with Petr Lansky of Prague.