  A primary challenge in utilizing in-vitro biological neural networks for
computations is finding good encoding and decoding schemes for inputting and
decoding data to and from the networks. Furthermore, identifying the optimal
parameter settings for a given combination of encoding and decoding schemes
adds additional complexity to this challenge. In this study we explore
stimulation timing as an encoding method, i.e. we encode information as the
delay between stimulation pulses and identify the bounds and acuity of
stimulation timings which produce linearly separable spike responses. We also
examine the optimal readout parameters for a linear decoder in the form of
epoch length, time bin size and epoch offset. Our results suggest that
stimulation timings between 36 and 436ms may be optimal for encoding and that
different combinations of readout parameters may be optimal at different parts
of the evoked spike response.
