Resolving neural states from optical neural response readout

Abstract

We examine two types of information loss function encountered in optical neural recording—the uncertainty of neural states encoding an external stimulus and the incompleteness of information that laser-excited fluorescence can read out from these neural states. We show that, even though these uncertainties are of distinctly different nature, they can be treated on an equal footing against the Fisher information metric, revealing the fundamental information limits inherent in optical neural recording.