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Chaos / Volume 21 / Issue 4 / FOCUS ISSUE: NONLINEAR AND STOCHASTIC PHYSICS IN BIOLOGY

Chaos 21, 047505 (2011); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3669494 (14 pages)

Sensory coding in oscillatory electroreceptors of paddlefish

Alexander B. Neiman1 and David F. Russell2

1Neuroscience Program, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701, USA
2Neuroscience Program, Department of Biological Sciences, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701, USA

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(Received 12 September 2011; accepted 22 November 2011; published online 29 December 2011)

Coherence and information theoretic analyses were applied to quantitate the response properties and the encoding of time-varying stimuli in paddlefish electroreceptors (ERs), studied in vivo. External electrical stimuli were Gaussian noise waveforms of varied frequency band and strength, including naturalistic waveforms derived from zooplankton prey. Our coherence analyses elucidated the role of internal oscillations and transduction processes in shaping the 0.5–20 Hz best frequency tuning of these electroreceptors, to match the electrical signals emitted by zooplankton prey. Stimulus-response coherence fell off above approximately 20 Hz, apparently due to intrinsic limits of transduction, but was detectable up to 40–50 Hz. Aligned with this upper fall off was a narrow band of intense internal noise at ∼25 Hz, due to prominent membrane potential oscillations in cells of sensory epithelia, which caused a narrow deadband of external insensitivity. Using coherence analysis, we showed that more than 76% of naturalistic stimuli of weak strength, ∼1 μV/cm, was linearly encoded into an afferent spike train, which transmitted information at a rate of ∼30 bits/s. Stimulus transfer to afferent spike timing became essentially nonlinear as the stimulus strength was increased to induce bursting firing. Strong stimuli, as from nearby zooplankton prey, acted to synchronize the bursting responses of afferents, including across populations of electroreceptors, providing a plausible mechanism for reliable information transfer to higher-order neurons through noisy synapses.

© 2011 American Institute of Physics

Article Outline

  1. INTRODUCTION
  2. METHODS
    1. Experimental
    2. Data analyses
  3. RESULTS
    1. Gain and coherence tuning curves
    2. Linear encoding and information rates
    3. Nonlinear responses
    4. Synchronization of burst events
  4. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
    1. Functional roles of oscillations in electroreception
    2. Epithelial oscillations
    3. Linear and non-linear responses and coding
    4. Notes on methods

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KEYWORDS and PACS

Keywords

bioelectric phenomena, biomechanics, biomembranes, cellular biophysics, Gaussian noise, microorganisms, neurophysiology, oscillations, time-varying systems, waveform analysis

PACS

ARTICLE DATA

Digital Object Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3669494

PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN

1054-1500 (print)  
1089-7682 (online)

Publisher

$abstract.society.value is a Member of CrossRef American Institute of Physics

For access to fully linked references, you need to log in.
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    Fuwape, I. and Neiman, A. B., “Spontaneous firing statistics and information transfer in electroreceptors of paddlefish,” Phys. Rev. E 78, 051922 (2008).

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    Neiman, A. B. and Russell, D. F., “Models of stochastic biperiodic oscillations and extended serial correlations in electroreceptors of paddlefish,” Phys. Rev. E 71, 061915 (2005).

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