Populationencodes
Population encoding is the neural strategy by which information about sensory stimuli, actions, or cognitive variables is represented by the collective activity of many neurons rather than by any single cell. In this view, a feature is encoded by patterns across populations, allowing robust and high-capacity representations.
Neural populations encode information through various mechanisms. Individual neurons often have tuning curves, responding preferentially to
Readout of population activity is possible through decoding, where downstream circuits or external analyses infer the
Examples and evidence span several domains. In vision, orientation-selective neurons in the cortex form a distributed
Advantages of population codes include robustness to noise or loss of individual neurons and higher representational