Fusing left and right eye images into a single view is dependent on precise ocular alignment, which relies on coordinated eye movements. During movements of the head this alignment is maintained by numerous reflexes. Although rodents share with other mammals the key components of eye movement control, the coordination of eye movements in freely moving rodents is unknown. Here we show that movements of the two eyes in freely moving rats differ fundamentally from the precisely controlled eye movements used by other mammals to maintain continuous binocular fusion. The observed eye movements serve to keep the visual fields of the two eyes continuously overlapping above the animal during free movement, but not continuously aligned. Overhead visual stimuli presented to rats freely exploring an open arena evoke an immediate shelter-seeking behaviour, but are ineffective when presented beside the arena. We suggest that continuously overlapping visual fields overhead would be of evolutionary benefit for predator detection by minimizing blind spots.

When a neuron responds to a sensory stimulus, two fundamental codes [1-6] may transmit the information specifying stimulus identity--spike rate (the total number of spikes in the sequence, normalized by time) and spike timing (the detailed millisecond-scale temporal structure of the response). To assess the functional significance of these codes, we recorded neuronal responses in primary (S1) and secondary (S2) somatosensory cortex of five rats as they used their whiskers to identify textured surfaces. From the spike trains evoked during whisker contact with the texture, we computed the information that rate and timing codes carried about texture identity and about the rat's choice. S1 and S2 spike timing carried more information about stimulus and about choice than spike rates; the conjunction of rate and timing carried more information than either code alone. Moreover, on trials when our spike-timing-decoding algorithm extracted faithful texture information, the rat was more likely to choose correctly; when our spike-timing-decoding algorithm extracted misleading texture information, the rat was more likely to err. For spike rate information, the relationship between faithfulness of the message and correct choice was significant but weaker. These results indicate that spike timing makes crucial contributions to tactile perception, complementing and surpassing those made by rate. The language by which somatosensory cortical neurons transmit information, and the readout mechanism used to produce behavior, appears to rely on multiplexed signals from spike rate and timing.

Different time-frequency techniques may be used to investigate the relation between latency and frequency of transient-evoked otoacoustic emissions. In this work, the optimization of these techniques and the interpretation of the experimental result are discussed. Time-frequency analysis of click-evoked otoacoustic emissions of 42 normal-hearing young subjects has been performed, using both wavelet and matching pursuit algorithms. Wavelet techniques are very effective to provide fast and reliable evaluation of the average latency of large samples of subjects. A major advantage of the matching pursuit technique, as observed by Jedrzejczak et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 115, 2148-2158 (2004)], is to provide detailed information about the time evolution of the response of single ears at selected frequencies. A hybrid matching pursuit algorithm that includes Fourier spectral information was developed, capable of speeding-up computation times and of identifying "spurious" atoms, whose latency-frequency relation is apparently anomalous. These atoms could be associated with several known phenomena, either intrinsic, such as intermodulation distortion, spontaneous emissions and multiple internal reflections, or extrinsic, such as instrumental noise, linear ringing and the acquisition window onset. A correct interpretation of these phenomena is important to get accurate estimates of the otoacoustic emission latency.

A core question underlying neurobiological and computational models of behavior is how individuals learn environmental statistics and use them to make predictions. Most investigations of this issue have relied on reactive paradigms, in which inferences about predictive processes are derived by modeling responses to stimuli that vary in likelihood. Here we deployed a novel anticipatory oculomotor metric to determine how input statistics impact anticipatory behavior that is decoupled from target-driven-response. We implemented transition constraints between target locations, so that the probability of a target being presented on the same side as the previous trial was 70% in one condition (pret70) and 30% in the other (pret30). Rather than focus on responses to targets, we studied subtle endogenous anticipatory fixation offsets (AFOs) measured while participants fixated the screen center, awaiting a target. These AFOs were small (,0.48 from center on average), but strongly tracked globallevel statistics. Speaking to learning dynamics, trial-bytrial fluctuations in AFO were well-described by a learning model, which identified a lower learning rate in pret70 than pret30, corroborating prior suggestions that pret70 is subjectively treated as more regular. Most importantly, direct comparisons with saccade latencies revealed that AFOs: (a) reflected similar temporal integration windows, (b) carried more information about the statistical context than did saccade latencies, and (c) accounted for most of the information that saccade latencies also contained about inputs statistics. Our work demonstrates how strictly predictive processes reflect learning dynamics, and presents a new direction for studying learning and prediction.