Figure 7. Enrichment improves population coding of CW deflections.

(A) Design of neural decoder for detecting a whisker deflection. (B) Performance of single-ROI decoders on detection of CW deflection vs. blank (no whisker deflection). (C) Detection performance for population decoders of varying size. Each ensemble decoder consisted of randomly positioned, simultaneously imaged ROIs, and was tested on detection of the whisker closest to the centroid of the ensemble. Bars show SEM. (D) Detection of a reference whisker deflection by ensemble decoders located at varying distances from the reference column. These were spatially clustered ensembles of 2–42 simultaneously imaged ROIs (see Materials and methods). Distance bins refer to distance between reference column center and the centroid of each ensemble.