An alternative to encoding for thinking about neural representation
Tomás J. Ryan
The standard way of construing representation in neuroscience thinks of neural activities as encoding information. The activity then contributes to the function of the system by communicating that information to its outputs. We argue that this way of thinking is in tension with a number of well-established facts about neural activities. In general, neural activities do not correspond to one particular environmental or experimental variable. They show mixed selectivity and mixed variance; they ar