Multiple-region representations minimize error in many conditions.

A Schematic of three different possibilities for representing a K = 8-dimensional stimulus. The features can all be represented in a single population (left); they can be distributed across two populations (middle); they can be distributed across three populations (right). The two and three population codes must represent some features redundantly to avoid assignment errors. B (top) The scaling of local MSE for the three codes above with population SNR (left) and the total number of units (right). The colors are the same as in A and C. (middle) The same as top but showing the scaling of the assignment error rate. (bottom) The same as top but showing the scaling of the total MSE. C The number of regions that minimizes the total distortion of the representation of K = 8 features for different numbers of neural units and population SNR. The white parts of the plot are when no representational scheme achieved total MSE < .5.