Understanding how the brain performs computations requires understanding neuronal firing patterns at successive levels of processing-a daunting and seemingly intractable task. Two recent studies have made dramatic progress on this problem by showing how its dimensionality can be reduced. Using the retina as a model system, they demonstrated that multineuronal firing patterns can be predicted by pairwise interactions.
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, 1300 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021, USA. shn201@med.cornell.edu
