Measures of spike train synchrony

Measures of spike train synchrony (or inversely spike train distances) are estimators of the (dis)similarity between two or sometimes more spike trains. Here spike train refers to a sequence of neuronal action potentials. Under the assumption that neither the shape of the action potential nor the background activity carry relevant information, neuronal responses are reduced to a spike train where the only information maintained is the timing of the individual spikes. A complementary class of approaches comprises measures of neuronal signal synchrony.