Lower Baseline Variability Gives Rise to Lower Detection Thresholds in Midbrain than Hindbrain Electrosensory Neurons

•Understanding how the activities of sensory neurons give rise to behavior remains poorly understood in general.•We investigated how midbrain electrosensory neurons respond to weak contrast stimuli.•We found that midbrain neurons displayed lower detection thresholds than afferent hindbrain neurons.•Further analysis revealed that this occurred because midbrain neurons displayed lower variability.