Figure 7.
Effect of external clock precision on available information. A, Time course of the ganglion cell pattern information about stimulus pair P1200–P400 (left) and the total stimulus set (middle). Each plot refers to a different degree of external clock precision; ΔTexternal is indicated simply as ΔT. Right, Peak spike pattern information about the total stimulus set as a function of external clock precision (ΔT). B, Time course of the cortical cell cluster pattern information about stimulus pair P1200–P400 (left) and the total stimulus set (middle). Conventions are the same as in A. Right, Peak spike pattern information about the total stimulus set as a function of external clock precision (ΔT). To prevent the expanded time window (widened by the amount ΔTexternal) from including spike patterns corresponding to the preceding stimulus, the analysis of the external clock precision was performed on the second whisk responses (see Materials and Methods). Information values corresponding to the first 24 ms of the whisk cycle are also excluded because they partially correspond to the late retraction phase of the preceding whisk cycle and are not specific to the second whisk. Slight differences with Figure 5, A and B, and the black traces of Figure 6 result from the fact that different whisks are analyzed.