Recovery of Stimuli Encoded with Hodgkin-Huxley Neurons

In the reverse correlation method [1] to neural encoding, the neural system is treated as a black box and both the input stimuli and output spike trains are assumed to be observable. Based on the correlation between the input and the output, the black box is identified as the kernel of a Wiener filter. When investigating problems arising in olfactory coding, an explicit characterization of odor stimuli is, however, not available. In addition, sensory systems are exposed to unknown stimuli in real-time. Under these conditions, investigations of sensory encoding of natural stimuli assume that only the spike train is observable and the neural system can be described as a non-linear dynamical system. The Hodgkin-Huxley neuron is the model of choice.