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A comparison of binless spike train measures

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Abstract

Several binless spike train measures which avoid the limitations of binning have been recently been proposed in the literature. This paper presents a systematic comparison of these measures in three simulated paradigms designed to address specific situations of interest in spike train analysis where the relevant feature may be in the form of firing rate, firing rate modulations, and/or synchrony. The measures are first disseminated and extended for ease of comparison. It also discusses how the measures can be used to measure dissimilarity in spike trains' firing rate despite their explicit formulation for synchrony.

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Notes

  1. Actually, in their works, Victor Purpura [1, 2] proposed not one but several spike train distances. Namely, D spike[q], D interval[q], D count[q] and D motif[q]. In this study, and as in most references to their work, VP distance refers to D spike[q].

  2. Filtered spike trains correspond to what is often referred to as “shot noise” in the point processes literature [32, Sect. 16.3].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA

    António R. C. Paiva, Il Park & José C. Príncipe

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  1. António R. C. Paiva
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  2. Il Park
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  3. José C. Príncipe
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Correspondence to António R. C. Paiva.

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Paiva, A.R.C., Park, I. & Príncipe, J.C. A comparison of binless spike train measures. Neural Comput & Applic 19, 405–419 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-009-0307-6

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