I'm reading a paper by Auge et al. (2021). In the introduction they said "Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) use short 'all-or-nothing' pulses to encode and transmit information".
I'm not sure what is the meaning of "all-or-nothing" in this context. Does it mean binary?
Auge, D., Hille, J., Mueller, E., & Knoll, A. (2021). A survey of encoding techniques for signal processing in spiking neural networks. Neural Processing Letters, 53(6), 4693-4710.
For an artificial network, yes, it typically means there is a binary output; this is a standard neuron model.
For a biological network, it's a bit more complicated, because although any moment in time can be a "spike" or "no spike", there isn't some discrete timeseries described by a binary code, but rather single events with an occurrence time.
I guess it comes from physiology where the strength of the response of a neuron or muscle fiber doesn't have anything to do with the strength of the stimulus. If a stimulus is above a certain threshold, the neuron will fire. So, in terms of SNN, it seems to me like a binary coding, where a neuron is either active or inactive within a specific time interval.
