Discrimination Among Temporal Patterns of Stimulation in a Computer Model of a Coelenterate Nerve Net

A simulation study is reported of the spread of excitation in a digital computer model based quite realistically on a coelenterate nerve net. The question posed is whether an elementary nervous system with randomly distributed properties can discriminate between time patterns of stimuli at the same average frequency. Forty-four temporal patterns of stimulation, each composed of seven stimuli in the same total period of time were applied to each of nine simulated nerve nets with each of eleven different distributions of four rates of decay of facilitation. The results may be summarized as follows:

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