The InfoPhase Method or How to Read Neurons with Neurons

Abstract. We present a novel method that can be used to characterize the dynamics of a source neuronal population. A set of readout, regular spiking neurons, is connected to the population in such a way as to facilitate coding of information about the source in the relative firing phase of the readouts. We show that such a strategy is useful in revealing temporally structured processes in the firing of source neurons, which have been recorded from cat visual cortex. We also suggest extensions of the method to allow for the direct identification of temporal firing patterns in the source population. Key words: Spiking neurons, temporal coding, readouts, visual cortex.