  Spike patterns have been reported to encode sensory information in several
brain areas. Here we assess the role of specific patterns in the neural code,
by comparing the amount of information transmitted with different choices of
the readout neural alphabet. This allows us to rank several alternative
alphabets depending on the amount of information that can be extracted from
them. One can thereby identify the specific patterns that constitute the most
prominent ingredients of the code. We finally discuss the interplay of
categorical and temporal information in the amount of synergy or redundancy in
the neural code.
