Invited talk: The role of spontaneous activity in sensory processing

Spontaneous, background activity in sensory areas is often similar in both magnitude and form to evoked responses. Embedding responses evoked by sensory stimuli in such strong and complex background activity seems like a confusing way to represent information about the outside world. However, modeling studies indicate that, contrary to intuition, information about sensory stimuli may be better conveyed by a network displaying chaotic background activity than in a network without spontaneous activity.