Zur Berechnung statistisch schwankender Impulsfolgen und ihrer Überlagerung

SummaryIn the central nervous system information transmission and processing are accomplished by pulses and pulse trains. The superposition of pulse trains is essential for information processing as it allows the execution of several logical operations, e.g. the multiplication of afferent signals. Jenik (1961) has pointed out that for the superposition of periodic pulse trains the rate of coincidence is proportional to the product of the pulse repetition frequencies (“multiplication law“). Furtheron he has shown that this simple principle is not always applicable. Errors may occur for certain repetition frequencies of the pulse trains. If the product of signals is accomplished by superposition, mechanisms must exist reducing these errors. Since pulse trains in the nervous system always vary stochastically the following paper is concerned with the effect of random pulse trains in superposition. Two different types of random pulse trains are investigated, trains with random phase and trains with random interval between the pulses. For these two cases calculation methods are given. It is also shown that the deviations from the “multiplication law” may disappear when superimposing random pulse trains.