# Determining the contribution of relative timing of activities across neurons in coding behaviorally distinguishable percepts

> **NIH NIH U19** · UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO · 2021 · $532,116

## Abstract

Precise spike timing plays an important role in sensory encoding. Spikes may convey information about the
time of events in the external world, as when an animal needs to escape quickly from a predator. Spike timing
may carry information about other physical characteristics of an external world; for example, interaural time
differences are informative about a location of a sound source. And in general, sensory information can be
carried by temporal codes, which means that information is represented in spike trains at time scales that are
faster than meaningful fluctuations of the external stimuli. However, these conclusions are based mostly on
observed correlations between sensory stimuli and spikes. The question of how the timing of sensory signals
relates to behavior remains elusive, mostly because appropriately precise tools have not been available to
manipulate the timing of sensory representations.
The current project will capitalize on a novel technique of two-photon holographic stimulation, which enables
the perturbation of activity in many individual neurons on time scales of ~10 ms, which is relevant for sensory
representation and behavioral readout. Application of this technique in three different sensory systems —
olfaction, vision, and audition — in combination with novel statistical and theoretical approaches, will address
fundamental questions about the role of the temporal structure of neural codes in behavior.
Sensory information may be represented by multiple temporal features of the neural code, such as multi-
neuronal synchrony, spike timing relative to other spikes, or to global neural dynamics, such as oscillations.
However, the presence of the information alone is not enough to prove that these features can be used to
evoke behavior. Aim 1 will examine which temporal features of sensory code can be used by animals to guide
behavior by measuring which classes of temporal information animals are capable of discriminating. Aim 2 will
provide complementary information by measuring the behavioral consequences of perturbing specific temporal
aspects of neuronal responses to natural stimuli.
Although the use of timing may differ between brain areas, the proposed comparative approach will reveal
general principles of sensory coding and establish how neural networks adjust for specific computational
demands of sensory information processing.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10231068
- **Project number:** 5U19NS107464-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
- **Principal Investigator:** Dmitry Rinberg
- **Activity code:** U19 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $532,116
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-15 → 2023-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10231068

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10231068, Determining the contribution of relative timing of activities across neurons in coding behaviorally distinguishable percepts (5U19NS107464-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10231068. Licensed CC0.

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