<p>It depends what you mean by a biological mechanism. If you mean that there should be a protein cascade that implements normalization, that doesn't seem plausible, in my opinion. Normalization in probabilistic population codes is just one of many computations that can be performed in a neural system.</p>

<p>If you're okay with the notion that there's nothing biologically unique about normalization, then <a href="http://compneuro.uwaterloo.ca/files/publications/eliasmith.2011.pdf" rel="nofollow">Normalization for probabilistic inference with neurons</a> (a paper written by my supervisor, Chris Eliasmith) proposes a spiking neural network performs normalization on probability density functions.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-09-18T13:42:49.627Z
2013-09-18T13:42:49.627Z
tbekolay
<p>I heard a talk yesterday by Dora Angelaki about multi-sensory integration.  Part of the talk was about bayesian inference with multiple noisy sources of information.  I know that there has been a lot of theoretical work done on bayesian inference and population coding, but I was wondering if there have been any biological mechanisms proposed for the population activity normalization necessary for these computations?</p>

<neuroscience><theoretical-neuroscience><bayesian>
Have there been any mechanisms proposed for normalization in probabilistic population codes?
honi
# Have there been any mechanisms proposed for normalization in probabilistic population codes?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2013-04-25)

I heard a talk yesterday by Dora Angelaki about multi-sensory integration. Part of the talk was about bayesian inference with multiple noisy sources of information. I know that there has been a lot of theoretical work done on bayesian inference and population coding, but I was wondering if there have been any biological mechanisms proposed for the population activity normalization necessary for these computations?

**Tags:** neuroscience, theoretical-neuroscience, bayesian


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2013-09-18. Score: 2

It depends what you mean by a biological mechanism. If you mean that there should be a protein cascade that implements normalization, that doesn't seem plausible, in my opinion. Normalization in probabilistic population codes is just one of many computations that can be performed in a neural system.

If you're okay with the notion that there's nothing biologically unique about normalization, then [Normalization for probabilistic inference with neurons](http://compneuro.uwaterloo.ca/files/publications/eliasmith.2011.pdf) (a paper written by my supervisor, Chris Eliasmith) proposes a spiking neural network performs normalization on probability density functions.


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