CODING PROPERTIES OF PEAK AND AVERAGE RESPONSE RATES IN AMERICAN COCKROACH OLFACTORY SENSORY CELLS

The response of phasic neurons is often measured in terms of average s piking rates over arbitrarily selected time intervals. Averages taken over inappropriate intervals may severely reduce the information conte nt of data, as we show here using response data from female American c ockroach peripheral olfactory cells. We demonstrate that a 100-ms peri od around the peak response contains the best information for discrimi nating among odors at moderate to high concentrations. Further, the 10 0-ms post-peak response period contains the best information at low co ncentrations, as well as in situations where it is important to minimi ze errors in misidentifying the quality of an odor. Averaging the data over the full 0.5 s stimulus period degrades the odor separation qual ities of the data.