Data from: Error-robust modes of the retinal population code

Across the nervous system, certain population spiking patterns are
observed far more frequently than others. A hypothesis about this
structure is that these collective activity patterns function as
population codewords–collective modes–carrying information distinct from
that of any single cell. We investigate this phenomenon in recordings of
∼150 retinal ganglion cells, the retina’s output. We develop a novel
statistical model that decomposes the population response into modes; it
predicts the distribution of spiking activity in the ganglion cell
population with high accuracy. We found that the modes represent localized
features of the visual stimulus that are distinct from the features
represented by single neurons. Modes form clusters of activity states that
are readily discriminated from one another. When we repeated the same
visual stimulus, we found that the same mode was robustly elicited. These
results suggest that retinal ganglion cells’ collective signaling is
endowed with a form of error-correcting code–a principle that may hold in
brain areas beyond retina.