A Novel Spike Distance

  • Authors:
  • M. C. W. Van Rossum

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Biology, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02454, U.S.A.

  • Venue:
  • Neural Computation
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

The discrimination between two spike trains is a fundamental problem for both experimentalists and the nervous system itself. We introduce a measure for the distance between two spike trains. The distance has a time constant as a parameter. Depending on this parameter, the distance interpolates between a coincidence detector and a rate difference counter. The dependence of the distance on noise is studied with an integrate-and-fire model. For an intermediate range of the time constants, the distance depends linearly on the noise. This property can be used to determine the intrinsic noise of a neuron.