Population codes encode many variables in the brain such as the orientation of visual contours. This chapter begins by reviewing the standard approach to coding and decoding using orientation selectivity as a case study. It describes how the populations of neurons encode information about single variables and how this information can be decoded from the population activity. The chapter also discusses the computations for extracting approximations, such as the population vector method, the maximum likelihood estimator, and Bayesian estimates, and finally, discusses uncertainty or probability distribution over the encoded stimulus and their computational advantages or disadvantages.
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