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Discrimination Among Temporal Patterns of Stimulation in a Computer Model of a Coelenterate Nerve Net

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How do Brains Work?
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Summary

A simulation study is reported of the spread of excitation in a digital computer model based quite realistically on a coelenterate nerve net. The question posed is whether an elementary nervous system with randomly distributed properties can discriminate between time patterns of stimuli at the same average frequency. Forty-four temporal patterns of stimulation, each composed of seven stimuli in the same total period of time were applied to each of nine simulated nerve nets with each of eleven different distributions of four rates of decay of facilitation. The results may be summarized as follows:

Aided by grants to Theodore H. Bullock from the National Institutes of Health. the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research. We gratefully acknowledge use of the Health Sciences Computing Facility and thank Steven Crocker for his assistance in rewriting portions of the nerve net program.

Predoctoral trainee under a program of the Brain Research Institute, supported by the National Institutes of Health. In addition, L. G. Fehmi was partially supported by an ONR contract on which Professor D. B. Lindsley is a principal investigator.

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© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Fehmi, L.G., Bullock, T.H. (1993). Discrimination Among Temporal Patterns of Stimulation in a Computer Model of a Coelenterate Nerve Net. In: How do Brains Work?. Birkhäuser, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-9427-3_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-9427-3_24

  • Publisher Name: Birkhäuser, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4684-9429-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4684-9427-3

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