Error protection

The exactness of sensory coding or motor outcome depends on the fidelity with which the action potentials transmit the information. This is facilitated in three manners:

- Since action potentials are all-or-none they are binary digital signals. The Binary digital information coding is less prone to the error than analog signaling as only two states require to be discriminated.

- With rate coding, the false absence or inclusion of irregular action potentials will not modify the mean frequency of a train of action potentials much, except the train is short.

- Most of the stimuli are sensed or motor output produced, by the populations of neurons operating in concert. This makes for a degree of redundancy. The firing errors in some neurons will be swamped by appropriate firing of the majority. Even if there are a sizeable number of false cells, then also the system will not fail catastrophically, all that occurs is that the information conveyed will be less accurate. The systems which fail in this manner are said to show graceful degradation.