Adding neurons may keep improving visual signals despite shared noise, analysis predicts

AI Summary

Research predicts that increasing the number of neurons may continually improve visual signal representation despite inherent noise in neural responses. This suggests that populations of neurons compensate for variability by coding information collectively.

Our brains internally represent the outside world through the coordinated activity of billions of neurons. A single neuron responds unreliably: Even when the same stimulus is shown repeatedly, its activity varies from trial to trial. Neuron populations can compensate for this variability by representing the same information across many neurons, a strategy known as population coding.