Efficient nonlinear receptive field estimation across processing stages of sensory systems
Marc Büttner, Matej Znidaric, Roland Diggelmann, Federica Rosselli, Annalisa Bucci, Andreas Hierlemann, Felix Franke · Bernstein Conference 2024
Characterizing the function of a neuron in a sensory neural network is fundamental in sensory systems neuroscience. Systems theory offers an unbiased approach to characterize the function of neural systems by their response to unstructured white noise stimuli (WN)[1,2]. Although effective in early sensory stages[3,4], it yields limited insights into neurons that perform nonlinear computations such as motion detection. Determining where the WN approach fails in the processing hierarchy constitutes an experimental question. We recorded spiking activity from mouse retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in