Dark matter of the brain-silent neurons?

The presence of silent neurons suggests sparse coding – but presence of sparse coding does not confirm the existence of silent neurons. According to the theory of sparse coding, to any given single stimulus, a large group of neurons will be silent in retort. According to Barth and Poulet the section of reactive neurons may be miscalculated due to the fact the stimulus given during the experiment may not be appropriate enough to stimulate all the neurons that are studies. To clear this out, if the neurons are truly silent that doesn’t respond to any stimulus, all the likely stimuli has to be tested on those neurons.2