Abstract.
The information transmission properties of single, de-efferented primary muscle-spindle afferents from the hind limb of the cat were investigated. The gastrocnemius medialis muscle was stretched randomly while recording spike trains from several muscle-spindle afferents in the dorsal root. Two classes of input stimuli were used: (i) Gaussian noise with band-limited flat spectrum, and (ii) Gaussian noise with a more “naturalistic” 1/f n spectrum. The “reconstruction” method was used to calculate a lower bound to the information rate (in bits per second) between the muscle spindles and the spinal cord. Results show that in response to the flat-spectrum input, primary muscle-spindle afferents transfer information mainly about high frequencies, carrying 2.12 bits/spike. In response to naturalistic-spectrum inputs, primary muscle-spindle afferents transfer information about both low and high frequencies, with “spiking efficiency” increasing to 2.67 bits/spike. A simple muscle-spindle simulation model was analyzed with the same method, emphasizing the important part played by the intrafusal fiber mechanical properties in information transmission.
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Received: 22 January 2002 / Accepted in revised form: 17 June 2002
Correspondence to: Y. Tock (e-mail: ytock@tx.technion.ac.il, Fax: +972-4-8323041)
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Tock, Y., Ljubisavljevic, M., Thunberg, J. et al. Information-theoretic analysis of de-efferented single muscle spindles. Biol Cybern 87, 241–248 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-002-0341-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-002-0341-2