SENSITIVITY OF DIFFERENT STIMULUS-TIMING STRATEGIES FOR THE DETECTIONOF SMALL EXCITATIONS IN NOISY SPIKE TRAIN DATA

There are several different strategies to control the timing of a stim ulus with respect to the ongoing discharge during the recording of neu ronal stimulus-response characteristics. One possible strategy consist s of delivering stimuli in such a way that a constant pre-stimulus spi ke density is reached. Another strategy enforces spike application wit h a constant stimulus latency after a spontaneous discharge. In this p aper the sensitivity of these different strategies for statistical ver ification of small excitatory response components was investigated. It was found that the difference between observed poststimulus spike dis tribution and expected spike distribution under the null hypothesis of no stimulus effect was larger using a constant-stimulus-latency (CSL) strategy with an appropriate value for the stimulus latency. Thus, th e statistical verification of neuronal response components is clearly facilitated if a CSL strategy is used. This superiority of the CSL str ategy is marked, especially for small excitations at neurons dischargi ng slowly with low discharge variability.