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bioRxiv · 10.1101/374090

High-dimensional geometry of population responses in visual cortex

Stringer, C.·Pachitariu, M.·Steinmetz, N.·Carandini, M.·Harris, K. D.
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Abstract

A neuronal population encodes information most efficiently when its activity is uncorrelated and high-dimensional, and most robustly when its activity is correlated and lower-dimensional. Here, we analyzed the correlation structure of natural image coding, in large visual cortical populations recorded from awake mice. Evoked population activity was high dimensional, with correlations obeying an unexpected power-law: the nth principal component variance scaled as 1/n. This was not inherited from the 1/f spectrum of natural images, because it persisted after stimulus whitening. We proved mathematically that the variance spectrum must decay at least this fast if a population code is smooth, i.e. if small changes in input cannot dominate population activity. The theory also predicts larger power-law exponents for lower-dimensional stimulus ensembles, which we validated experimentally. These results suggest that coding smoothness represents a fundamental constraint governing correlations in neural population codes.

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Stringer, C., Pachitariu, M., Steinmetz, N., Carandini, M., Harris, K. D.. 2018-07-22. High-dimensional geometry of population responses in visual cortex. https://doi.org/10.1101/374090

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