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Population vector

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Source updated June 25, 2025

In neuroscience, a population vector is the sum of the preferred directions of a population of neurons, weighted by the respective spike counts.

The formula for computing the (normalized) population vector, $F$ , takes the following form:

$F={\frac {\sum _{j}m_{j}F_{j}}{\sum _{j}m_{j}}}$

Where $m_{j}$ is the activity of cell $j$ , and $F_{j}$ is the preferred input for cell $j$ .

Note that the vector $F$ encodes the input direction, $F_{j}$ , in terms of the activation of a population of neurons.

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