COARSE CODING - CALCULATION OF THE RESOLUTION ACHIEVED BY A POPULATION OF LARGE RECEPTIVE-FIELD NEURONS

Electrophysiological studies in various sensory systems of different s pecies show that many neurons involved in object localization have lar ge receptive fields. This seems to contradict the high sensory resolut ion and the behavioral precision observed in localization experiments. Assuming a coarse coding mechanism, the resolution obtained by an ens emble of neurons is analytically calculated as a function of receptive field size. It is shown that particularly large receptive fields yiel d a high resolution.