The purpose of this article is to provide mathematical insights into the results of some Monte Carlo simulations published by Tolhurst and colleagues (Clatworthy, Chirimuuta, Lauritzen, & Tolhurst, 2003; Chirimuuta & Tolhurst, 2005a). In these simulations, the contrast of a visual stimulus was encoded by a model spiking neuron or a set of such neurons. The mean spike count of each neuron was gi...