The information content of receptive fields. Author Thomas Adelman, William Bialek, Robert Olberg Publication Year 2003 Type Journal Article Abstract The nervous system must observe a complex world and produce appropriate, sometimes complex, behavioral responses. In contrast to this complexity, neural responses are often characterized through very simple descriptions such as receptive fields or tuning curves. Do these characterizations adequately reflect the true dimensionality reduction that takes place in the nervous system, or are they merely convenient oversimplifications? Here we address this question for the target-selective descending neurons (TSDNs) of the dragonfly. Using extracellular multielectrode recordings of a population of TSDNs, we quantify the completeness of the receptive field description of these cells and conclude that the information in independent instantaneous position and velocity receptive fields accounts for 70%-90% of the total information in single spikes. Thus, we demonstrate that this simple receptive field model is close to a complete description of the features in the stimulus that evoke TSDN response. Keywords Animals, Signal Transduction, Action Potentials, Neurons, Photic Stimulation, Synaptic Transmission, Visual Fields, Brain, Visual Perception, Insects, Efferent Pathways, Ganglia, Invertebrate, Visual Pathways Journal Neuron Volume 40 Issue 4 Pages 823-33 Date Published 11/2003 Alternate Journal Neuron Google ScholarBibTeXEndNote X3 XML