How Synchronization Protects from Noise
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Tabareau-2010-How Synchronization.pdf
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Author(s)
Pham, Quang-Cuong
Tabareau, Nicolas
Slotine, Jean-Jacques E.
Date Issued
January 2009
Journal
PLoS Computational Biology
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Citation
Tabareau, Nicolas, Jean-Jacques Slotine, and Quang-Cuong Pham. “How Synchronization Protects from Noise.” PLoS Comput Biol 6.1 (2010): e1000637. © 2010 Tabareau et al.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The functional role of synchronization has attracted much interest and debate: in particular, synchronization may allow
distant sites in the brain to communicate and cooperate with each other, and therefore may play a role in temporal binding,
in attention or in sensory-motor integration mechanisms. In this article, we study another role for synchronization: the socalled
‘‘collective enhancement of precision’’. We argue, in a full nonlinear dynamical context, that synchronization may help
protect interconnected neurons from the influence of random perturbations—intrinsic neuronal noise—which affect all
neurons in the nervous system. More precisely, our main contribution is a mathematical proof that, under specific,
quantified conditions, the impact of noise on individual interconnected systems and on their spatial mean can essentially be
cancelled through synchronization. This property then allows reliable computations to be carried out even in the presence
of significant noise (as experimentally found e.g., in retinal ganglion cells in primates). This in turn is key to obtaining
meaningful downstream signals, whether in terms of precisely-timed interaction (temporal coding), population coding, or
frequency coding. Similar concepts may be applicable to questions of noise and variability in systems biology.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nonlinear Systems Laboratory
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000637
