Information content and robustness of various types of codes in integrate and fire networks presented with naturalistic stimuli

Several candidate neural codes have been proposed to convey sensory information, from spike count to spike patterns, to the timing of spikes relative to oscillations in the Local Field Potential (LFP). Recent experimental studies compared the information content of different codes in V1 [1] and A1 [2]. A code combining the spike count and the phase of firing relative to the low frequency component of the LFP contained more information than spike count [1,2] and displayed also a higher robustness to noise [2]. Spike patterns also conveyed more information than the spike count over the same window [2]