Noise in the nervous system

By Aldo A. Faisal, Luc P. J. Selen, D. M. Wolpert. 2008

1,607 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Noise — random disturbances of signals — poses a fundamental problem for information processing and affects all aspects of nervous-system function. However, the nature, amount and impact of noise in the nervous system have only recently been addressed in a quantitative manner. Experimental and computational methods have shown that multiple noise sources contribute to cellular and behavioural trial-to-trial variability. We review the sources of noise in the nervous system, from the molecular to the behavioural level, and show how noise contributes to trial-to-trial variability. We highlight how noise affects neuronal networks and the principles the nervous system applies to counter detrimental effects of noise, and briefly discuss noise's potential benefits.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

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Citations in the corpus

Dynamic reconfiguration of human brain networks during learning (2010, background): “Flexibility might be a network signature of a complex underlying cortical system characterized by noise (49).”
The mechanisms for pattern completion and pattern separation in the hippocampus (2013, background): “The sources of the noise include quantal transmitter release, and noise in ion channel openings (Faisal et al., 2008).”
Why Neurons Have Thousands of Synapses, a Theory of Sequence Memory in Neocortex (2015, background): “Additionally, it is well known that biological synapses are stochastic (Faisal et al., 2008), so a neocortical theory cannot require precision of synaptic efficacy.”
Integration of nanoscale memristor synapses in neuromorphic computing architectures (2013, background): “…is signiﬁcant trial to trial variability in their responses to identical stimuli; it is evident also at the level of chemical synapses, where there is a high degree of stochasticity in the transmission of neurotransmitter molecules [73], from the pre-synaptic terminal to the post-synaptic one.”