Methods
The basic method is based on estimating the signal-to-noise ratio in the binned spike trains, under the sole assumption that the spike trains are realizations of either doubly stochastic Poisson process (DSPP) or dead-time modified DSPP [1]. This assumption is verified by demonstrating that the probability densities of the recorded ISIs are approximated well by a mixture of two exponential distributions. Furthermore, it is shown that the estimated SNR is proportional to the actual SNR for signal-dependent additive noise, so it is appropriate for sensitivity analysis.