Spike times make sense.

Many behavioral responses are completed too quickly for the underlying sensory processes to rely on estimation of neural firing rates over extended time windows. Theoretically, first-spike times could underlie such rapid responses, but direct evidence has been lacking. Such evidence has now been uncovered in the human somatosensory system. We discuss these findings and their potential generalization to other sensory modalities, and we consider some future challenges for the neuroscientific community.