Conclusions
The time-rescaling theorem has been used extensively to assess goodness-of-fit and to compare different single-neuron models. Multivariate population models became popular only recently. Some of the approaches did not attempt any goodness-of-fit analysis at all or used the time-rescaling theorem separately for each modeled spike train. The proposed multivariate time-rescaling theorem fills the missing gap. Our studies using experimental data show that the use of the univariate theorem may erroneously indicate a good fit for independent encoding models. The lack of fit is detected by the multivariate extension and can be partly corrected for by including additional cross-interaction terms in the model. Overall, the proposed procedure is a simple-to-implement analysis tool for any population model that is based on the conditional intensity formalism.