Representation of Cortical Unit Response to Texture and Orientation of Tactile Gratings in the Rat

摘要

Data obtained as a result of experimental procedures must become encoded and/ or displayed in some form to assure communication.The decision as to what form is chosen is not a trivial one.Interpretation hangs on that decision.We have chosen two forms of display of data obtained in mapping receptive fields of units in somatosensory cortex responding to whisker stimulation.Vector representation is a popular form that allows ready interpretation,communication and manipulation.However,the vector representation is less complete than one that maps the entire field in terms of spectral density.Spectral density maps provide a deeper understanding of the response of the cortex because of their greater detail but suffer from being highly convoluted and therefore difficult to use per se in further analyses.