41,371 research outputs found
Wiring optimization explanation in neuroscience: What is Special about it?
This paper examines the explanatory distinctness of wiring optimization models in neuroscience. Wiring optimization models aim to represent the organizational features of neural and brain systems as optimal (or near-optimal) solutions to wiring optimization problems. My claim is that that wiring optimization models provide design explanations. In particular, they support ideal interventions on the decision variables of the relevant design problem and assess the impact of such interventions on the viability of the target system
Evolutionary Neural Gas (ENG): A Model of Self Organizing Network from Input Categorization
Despite their claimed biological plausibility, most self organizing networks
have strict topological constraints and consequently they cannot take into
account a wide range of external stimuli. Furthermore their evolution is
conditioned by deterministic laws which often are not correlated with the
structural parameters and the global status of the network, as it should happen
in a real biological system. In nature the environmental inputs are noise
affected and fuzzy. Which thing sets the problem to investigate the possibility
of emergent behaviour in a not strictly constrained net and subjected to
different inputs. It is here presented a new model of Evolutionary Neural Gas
(ENG) with any topological constraints, trained by probabilistic laws depending
on the local distortion errors and the network dimension. The network is
considered as a population of nodes that coexist in an ecosystem sharing local
and global resources. Those particular features allow the network to quickly
adapt to the environment, according to its dimensions. The ENG model analysis
shows that the net evolves as a scale-free graph, and justifies in a deeply
physical sense- the term gas here used.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure
Coordinated optimization of visual cortical maps : 2. Numerical studies
In the juvenile brain, the synaptic architecture of the visual cortex remains in a state of flux for months after the natural onset of vision and the initial emergence of feature selectivity in visual cortical neurons. It is an attractive hypothesis that visual cortical architecture is shaped during this extended period of juvenile plasticity by the coordinated optimization of multiple visual cortical maps such as orientation preference (OP), ocular dominance (OD), spatial frequency, or direction preference. In part (I) of this study we introduced a class of analytically tractable coordinated optimization models and solved representative examples, in which a spatially complex organization of the OP map is induced by interactions between the maps. We found that these solutions near symmetry breaking threshold predict a highly ordered map layout. Here we examine the time course of the convergence towards attractor states and optima of these models. In particular, we determine the timescales on which map optimization takes place and how these timescales can be compared to those of visual cortical development and plasticity. We also assess whether our models exhibit biologically more realistic, spatially irregular solutions at a finite distance from threshold, when the spatial periodicities of the two maps are detuned and when considering more than 2 feature dimensions. We show that, although maps typically undergo substantial rearrangement, no other solutions than pinwheel crystals and stripes dominate in the emerging layouts. Pinwheel crystallization takes place on a rather short timescale and can also occur for detuned wavelengths of different maps. Our numerical results thus support the view that neither minimal energy states nor intermediate transient states of our coordinated optimization models successfully explain the architecture of the visual cortex. We discuss several alternative scenarios that may improve the agreement between model solutions and biological observations
Learning with Delayed Synaptic Plasticity
The plasticity property of biological neural networks allows them to perform
learning and optimize their behavior by changing their configuration. Inspired
by biology, plasticity can be modeled in artificial neural networks by using
Hebbian learning rules, i.e. rules that update synapses based on the neuron
activations and reinforcement signals. However, the distal reward problem
arises when the reinforcement signals are not available immediately after each
network output to associate the neuron activations that contributed to
receiving the reinforcement signal. In this work, we extend Hebbian plasticity
rules to allow learning in distal reward cases. We propose the use of neuron
activation traces (NATs) to provide additional data storage in each synapse to
keep track of the activation of the neurons. Delayed reinforcement signals are
provided after each episode relative to the networks' performance during the
previous episode. We employ genetic algorithms to evolve delayed synaptic
plasticity (DSP) rules and perform synaptic updates based on NATs and delayed
reinforcement signals. We compare DSP with an analogous hill climbing algorithm
that does not incorporate domain knowledge introduced with the NATs, and show
that the synaptic updates performed by the DSP rules demonstrate more effective
training performance relative to the HC algorithm.Comment: GECCO201
Characterizing Self-Developing Biological Neural Networks: A First Step Towards their Application To Computing Systems
Carbon nanotubes are often seen as the only alternative technology to silicon
transistors. While they are the most likely short-term one, other longer-term
alternatives should be studied as well. While contemplating biological neurons
as an alternative component may seem preposterous at first sight, significant
recent progress in CMOS-neuron interface suggests this direction may not be
unrealistic; moreover, biological neurons are known to self-assemble into very
large networks capable of complex information processing tasks, something that
has yet to be achieved with other emerging technologies. The first step to
designing computing systems on top of biological neurons is to build an
abstract model of self-assembled biological neural networks, much like computer
architects manipulate abstract models of transistors and circuits. In this
article, we propose a first model of the structure of biological neural
networks. We provide empirical evidence that this model matches the biological
neural networks found in living organisms, and exhibits the small-world graph
structure properties commonly found in many large and self-organized systems,
including biological neural networks. More importantly, we extract the simple
local rules and characteristics governing the growth of such networks, enabling
the development of potentially large but realistic biological neural networks,
as would be needed for complex information processing/computing tasks. Based on
this model, future work will be targeted to understanding the evolution and
learning properties of such networks, and how they can be used to build
computing systems
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