Tuning curve

In the Neuroscience is tuning curve (English tuning curve ) a mathematical description for the characterization of the response behavior of a sensory nerve cell to a specific external stimulus. Depending on a certain stimulus parameter (stimulus), the nerve cell responds with an average rate of fire (response).

Description and definition

Sensory nerve cells typically have the ability to respond to different types of stimuli by generating action potentials (also called spikes ). The tuning curve describes the average number of action potentials ( i.e. the rate of fire ) of a nerve cell as a function of precisely one specific stimulus parameter ( ). This definition shows that a nerve cell can generally have several tuning curves and that a tuning curve alone is insufficiently suitable for characterizing the behavior of a nerve cell. ${\displaystyle \!\ r=f(s)}$ ${\displaystyle r}$ ${\displaystyle s}$

literature

• Peter Dayan and Laurence F. Abbott: Theoretical neuroscience: computational and mathematical modeling of neural systems . MIT Press, 2001, ISBN 0-262-04199-5 .