Excerpt

Neurons are information-processing devices. Their inputs are environmental signals like light and pressure, or chemical ligands like volatile molecules or neurotransmitters released by pre-synaptic neurons in a circuit. These signals activate receptors embedded in the cell membrane, often on a neuron’s dendritic arbor, triggering currents that change the membrane potential. In some neurons, a sufficient increase in the potential triggers a sharp voltage “spike” that propagates down the axon, leading to neurotransmitter release at the output synapses and transmission to the postsynaptic neurons. The net effect is that the neuron reconfigures and transmits some information in its inputs to the next stage.

In the mid-twentieth century, scientists realized that if we regard neurons in this way, communications theory should provide  a framework for understanding the organization and function of neural circuits. In particular, the brain sciences quickly  absorbed  Claude Shannon’s invention of information theory in 1948. This led to the seminal works of Fred Attneave in the mid-1950s and Horace Barlow in the early 1960s, which proposed applying ideas from information theory to interpreting sensory perception and its neural basis. For example, Barlow proposed that the lateral inhibition seen ubiquitously in early mammalian sensory circuits provided a mechanism for removing correlations in natural stimuli, thereby compressing them for maximal transmission through bottlenecks like the optic nerve.

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