Fisher information quantifies task-specific performance in the blowfly photoreceptor

Performance on specific tasks in an organism's everyday activities is essential to survival. In this paper, we extend information-theoretic investigation of neural systems to task specific information using a detailed biophysical model of the blowfly photoreceptor. We formulate the response of the photoreceptor to incident flashes and determine the optimal detection performance using ideal observer analysis. Furthermore, we derive Fisher information contained in the output of the photoreceptor, and show how Fisher information is related to the detection performance. In addition we use Fisher information to show the connections between detection performance, signal-noise ratio, and discriminability. Our detailed biophysical model of the blowfly photoreceptor provides a rich framework for information-theoretic study of neural systems.