Figure 1. Amount of information transferred by a neuron in the case where all response states are equiprobable.

(A) Stimulus-response function. The amount of transferred information is limited by the finite range of possible response states. Due to the non-linearity of the stimulus-response function, each response state encodes different relative changes in stimulus intensity. (B) Corresponding probability density function (pdf). Maximum information is transferred if all response states are used equally, i.e., if the area under the stimulus pdf is equal for each response state, as shown. In the limit of vanishingly small response states, the optimal stimulus CDF corresponds to the (normalized) stimulus-response function (adapted from [2]).