The Nervous System in the Context of Information Theory

Abstract

Because of functional resemblances between the nervous system and man-made communication systems --- in particular, the analogy between a nerve fiber and a cable over which information is transmitted --- a number of authors have approached the nervous system from the viewpoint of the communications engineer, primarily by applying information theory [6, 7, 8, 10]. The latter, together with control-systems theory (Chapter 15), constitutes the branch of science called cybernetics [1, 2, 3, 5, 9]. This chapter first presents an introduction to the fundamentals of information theory and the measurement of information content. This method is then applied to examples drawn from neurophysiology and psychophysics, to describe quantitatively the performance and limits of biological information transfer.