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Umeå physiologists describe a new principle for information coding in the nervous system

How does the nervous system code, transmit, and process the information that steers our behaviour? Ronald S. Johansson’s research team at Umeå University in Sweden is now publishing its discovery of a new principle for this.

The prevailing view is that information is coded and transmitted by variations in the number of nerve impulses per time unit in the fibres of the nerve cells, that is, as a frequency code.

Johansson’s research team at the Section for Physiology present in the journal Nature Neuroscience a new principle for how information is coded and transmitted in the nervous system. When we manipulate objects, the brain reacts more quickly to the form of the objects and the direction of the contact forces than would be possible with frequency coding of information from the sensory organs of the fingertips. Frequency coding would require that the individual nerve fibre would have time to signal at least two impulses, and to interpret the message the brain needs to monitor signal traffic for a considerable period of time.

Hans Fällman | alfa
Further information:
http://www.umu.se/umu/index_eng.html

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