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A long-standing controversy in neural coding has been about whether the timing of individual action potentials (spikes) conveys information and is behaviorally relevant or whether information is instead transmitted simply by neurons’ firing rates. Both peripheral and cortical somatosensory neurons in primates can exhibit precisely timed action potentials in response to tactile stimuli, and there is a growing consensus that not only is some tactile information exclusively represented by such temporal codes but also that spike timing can shape tactile perception.
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Precisely Timed Responses of Cutaneous Mechanoreceptors to Skin Vibrations
In primates, rapidly adapting (RA) and Pacinian (PC) afferents entrain to medium- and high-frequency vibrations, respectively, in that their action potentials occur precisely within a given phase of each stimulus cycle (Talbot et al. 1968). Such...
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References
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Saal, H. (2013). Somatosensory Neurons: Spike Timing. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_387-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_387-2
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Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7320-6
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