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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience pp 1–4Cite as

Metric Space Analysis of Neural Information Flow

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In the metric-space approach to spike train analysis, spike trains are regarded as points in a metric space, that is, a space with a distance defined between any pair of points.

Spike Train Metrics

The Victor-Purpura metric (Victor and Purpura 1996) is one common way to define a metric distance between spike trains. The Victor-Purpura metric considers a fictional total cost for transforming one spike train into another using three basic operations: spike insertion, spike deletion and spike movement. Each basic operation is given an individual cost; one for inserting or deleting a spike and q|δt| for moving a spike a temporal distance δt. The cost-per-time, q, is a parameter, with the timescale 2/q thought of as corresponding to the temporal precision of spike times in the metric. The distance between the two spike trains is then defined as the cost of the cheapest transformation of one to the other. In other words, the distance between spike trains x and y is given by

$$ d\left(x,\...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Dr. Conor Houghton

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  1. Dr. Conor Houghton
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Correspondence to Conor Houghton .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA

    Ranu Jung

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Houghton, C. (2014). Metric Space Analysis of Neural Information Flow. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_744-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_744-1

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  1. Latest

    Metric Space Analysis of Neural Information Flow
    Published:
    28 June 2020

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_744-2

  2. Original

    Metric Space Analysis of Neural Information Flow
    Published:
    28 March 2014

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_744-1

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