# Show Reference: "Reading population codes: a neural implementation of ideal observers."

Reading population codes: a neural implementation of ideal observers. Nature neuroscience, Vol. 2, No. 8. (August 1999), pp. 740-745, doi:10.1038/11205 by S. Deneve, P. E. Latham, A. Pouget
@article{deneve-et-al-1999,
abstract = {Many sensory and motor variables are encoded in the nervous system by the activities of large populations of neurons with bell-shaped tuning curves. Extracting information from these population codes is difficult because of the noise inherent in neuronal responses. In most cases of interest, maximum likelihood ({ML}) is the best read-out method and would be used by an ideal observer. Using simulations and analysis, we show that a close approximation to {ML} can be implemented in a biologically plausible model of cortical circuitry. Our results apply to a wide range of nonlinear activation functions, suggesting that cortical areas may, in general, function as ideal observers of activity in preceding areas.},
author = {Deneve, S. and Latham, P. E. and Pouget, A.},
doi = {10.1038/11205},
issn = {1097-6256},
journal = {Nature neuroscience},
keywords = {bayes, population-coding},
month = aug,
number = {8},
pages = {740--745},
pmid = {10412064},
posted-at = {2012-07-02 16:52:15},
priority = {2},
title = {Reading population codes: a neural implementation of ideal observers.},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/11205},
volume = {2},
year = {1999}
}