Cosyne 2007 Workshops
February 27, 2007
The Canyons, Utah
Speaker Name
Don Johnson, J.S. Abercrombie Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Rice University
Talk Title
Correlations in Populations: Information-Theoretic Limits
Talk Abstract
Information theory may not be able to say much about analyzing specific datasets, but it does define the ultimate limits and can analyze whether correlations represent an effective coding strategy. We summarize past information theoretic analyses of population codes, which all seem to indicate that intra-populations aren't needed. We derive the information capacity of a population. First of all, stimulus-induced correlations, whether arising from individual inputs to each population member or from a single input, produce the same information capacity. We further show that while correlation can increase capacity, these capacity increases are quite modest.
