A novel spike distance

The discrimination between two spike trains is a fundamental problem for bo th experimentalists and the nervous system itself. We introduce a measure f or the distance between two spike trains. The distance has a time constant as a parameter. Depending on this parameter, the distance interpolates betw een a coincidence detector and a rate difference counter. The dependence of the distance on noise is studied with an integrate-and-fire model. For an intermediate range of the time constants, the distance depends linearly on the noise. This property can be used to determine the intrinsic noise of a neuron.