Adaptation in somatosensory afferents improves rate and temporal coding of vibrotactile stimulus features

Adaptation is a common neural phenomenon wherein sustained stimulation evokes fewer action potentials (spikes) over time. Rather than simply reduce firing rate, adaptation may help neurons form better (i.e. more discriminable) representations of sensory input. To study effects of adaptation in low-threshold mechanoreceptors (LTMRs), we recorded single unit LTMR responses to 30-second-long vibrotactile stimuli with different intensities and frequencies applied to the hind paw of rats. To assess the impact of adaptation on somatosensory encoding, decoders were applied to the initial and late (adapted) phases of population-level responses to assess the decodability (discrimination) of stimulus intensity and frequency. Adaptation-mediated changes in the rate and timing (phase-locking) of spikes were quantified. Rate coding of stimulus intensity was improved by the nonuniform reduction in firing rate across responses to different stimuli, and across neurons. This improvement was absent in simulations with uniform reductions in firing rate, thus revealing the necessity of stimulus-dependent variability in adaptation effects. Spike timing (quantified as interspike intervals) remained highly informative about stimulus frequency throughout stimulation despite the progressive reduction in spike count over time. When the drop in spike count was accounted for, adaptation was found to improve temporal coding of stimulus frequency by increasing the precision of phase-locking. In other words, adaptation improved the precision of spike timing, and this increased the information about stimulus frequency conveyed by each spike. These results show that adaptation, by modulating spiking in different ways, can improve encoding of different stimulus features using different coding schemes. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTFiring rate adaptation refers to the progressive reduction in spiking during sustained stimulation. Adaptation is often ascribed to fatigue and could conceivably introduce ambiguity into neural representations by causing (the probability or timing of) spike generation to depend not only on the current stimulus, but also on past stimulation. By recording from rat primary somatosensory afferents during vibrotactile stimulation of the paw, we show that nonuniform adaptation across sets of afferents improves rate-based coding of stimulus intensity. We also show that adaptation improves spike timing (phase-locking to a periodic stimulus) which, in turn, improves temporal coding of stimulus frequency. These results demonstrate that early-stage adaptation improves somatosensory signals relayed centrally.