A new similarity measure for spike trains: Sensitivity to bursts and periods of inhibition

An important problem in neuroscience is that of constructing quantitative measures of the similarity between neural spike trains. These measures can be used, for example, to assess the reliability of the response of a single neuron to repeated stimulus presentations, or to uncover relationships in the firing patterns of multiple neurons in a population. While several similarity measures have been proposed, the extent to which they take into account various biologically important spike train features such as bursts of spikes, or periods of inactivity remains poorly understood. Here we compare these measures using tests specifically designed to assess the sensitivity to bursts and silent periods. In addition, we propose two new measures. The first is designed to detect periods of shared silence between spike trains, while the second is designed to emphasize the presence of common bursts. To assist researchers in determining which measure is best suited to their particular data analysis needs, we also show how these measures can be combined and how their parameters can be determined on the basis of physiologically relevant quantities.

► We analyze how current spike train similarity measures are affected by bursts and silent periods. ► This analysis provides a way to distinguish spike train similarity measures from one another. ► We discuss some practical implications of the differences in spike train similarity measures. ► We propose new similarity measures specifically designed to respond to bursts and silent periods. ► We show that our measures perform better than the other measures.