Neural spike irregularity in adjacent cells of the same visual cortical column are unrelated despite other shared properties

Abstract

Reliable visual information processing is required for coordinated visuomotor behavior. Yet, in visual cortical neurons, repeated presentation of optimal visual stimuli frequently fail to elicit output spike trains that show temporal precision from trial to trial except in the average spike rate, spawning the belief that a population of neurons is required to provide, on average, the required reliability. If so, neighboring cells in a cortical column that share common anatomical inputs and show similar physiological response characteristics to visual stimuli, such as orientation preference, may be expected to show similar degrees of irregularity in the inter spike interval (ISI). We measured..