Appendix 3—figure 1. Bursts are informative.

Whilst having similar information transfer rates, the responses to bursty stimuli (left) show higher signal-to-noise ratio within brief (10–100 ms) perceptually relevant time windows than the responses to Gaussian white-noise (GWN, right). The data are from the same cell. (A) 25 intracellularly recorded voltage responses to repeated bursty and GWN light stimuli. Individual responses (superimposed) are shown in light grey and their mean in black traces. Both of these responses series carry similar information contents (~350 bits/s), as estimated by Shannon’s equation (see Equation A2.1). (B) The signal (average response) standard deviation (SD) in 10 ms windows to bursty stimulation vary much more than that to white-noise. The noise variability (blue traces) in the two sets of responses (SD in 10 ms time windows) is similar. (C) Signal-to-noise ratio is much greater in the responses to light bursts than to white-noise stimulation; it was calculated as the ratio between signal SD and noise SD, using 10 ms time resolution.