7,155 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Real-time decoding of question-and-answer speech dialogue using human cortical activity.
Natural communication often occurs in dialogue, differentially engaging auditory and sensorimotor brain regions during listening and speaking. However, previous attempts to decode speech directly from the human brain typically consider listening or speaking tasks in isolation. Here, human participants listened to questions and responded aloud with answers while we used high-density electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings to detect when they heard or said an utterance and to then decode the utterance's identity. Because certain answers were only plausible responses to certain questions, we could dynamically update the prior probabilities of each answer using the decoded question likelihoods as context. We decode produced and perceived utterances with accuracy rates as high as 61% and 76%, respectively (chance is 7% and 20%). Contextual integration of decoded question likelihoods significantly improves answer decoding. These results demonstrate real-time decoding of speech in an interactive, conversational setting, which has important implications for patients who are unable to communicate
On Robust Face Recognition via Sparse Encoding: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
In the field of face recognition, Sparse Representation (SR) has received
considerable attention during the past few years. Most of the relevant
literature focuses on holistic descriptors in closed-set identification
applications. The underlying assumption in SR-based methods is that each class
in the gallery has sufficient samples and the query lies on the subspace
spanned by the gallery of the same class. Unfortunately, such assumption is
easily violated in the more challenging face verification scenario, where an
algorithm is required to determine if two faces (where one or both have not
been seen before) belong to the same person. In this paper, we first discuss
why previous attempts with SR might not be applicable to verification problems.
We then propose an alternative approach to face verification via SR.
Specifically, we propose to use explicit SR encoding on local image patches
rather than the entire face. The obtained sparse signals are pooled via
averaging to form multiple region descriptors, which are then concatenated to
form an overall face descriptor. Due to the deliberate loss spatial relations
within each region (caused by averaging), the resulting descriptor is robust to
misalignment & various image deformations. Within the proposed framework, we
evaluate several SR encoding techniques: l1-minimisation, Sparse Autoencoder
Neural Network (SANN), and an implicit probabilistic technique based on
Gaussian Mixture Models. Thorough experiments on AR, FERET, exYaleB, BANCA and
ChokePoint datasets show that the proposed local SR approach obtains
considerably better and more robust performance than several previous
state-of-the-art holistic SR methods, in both verification and closed-set
identification problems. The experiments also show that l1-minimisation based
encoding has a considerably higher computational than the other techniques, but
leads to higher recognition rates
Style Transfer and Extraction for the Handwritten Letters Using Deep Learning
How can we learn, transfer and extract handwriting styles using deep neural
networks? This paper explores these questions using a deep conditioned
autoencoder on the IRON-OFF handwriting data-set. We perform three experiments
that systematically explore the quality of our style extraction procedure.
First, We compare our model to handwriting benchmarks using multidimensional
performance metrics. Second, we explore the quality of style transfer, i.e. how
the model performs on new, unseen writers. In both experiments, we improve the
metrics of state of the art methods by a large margin. Lastly, we analyze the
latent space of our model, and we see that it separates consistently writing
styles.Comment: Accepted in ICAART 201
Representation Learning: A Review and New Perspectives
The success of machine learning algorithms generally depends on data
representation, and we hypothesize that this is because different
representations can entangle and hide more or less the different explanatory
factors of variation behind the data. Although specific domain knowledge can be
used to help design representations, learning with generic priors can also be
used, and the quest for AI is motivating the design of more powerful
representation-learning algorithms implementing such priors. This paper reviews
recent work in the area of unsupervised feature learning and deep learning,
covering advances in probabilistic models, auto-encoders, manifold learning,
and deep networks. This motivates longer-term unanswered questions about the
appropriate objectives for learning good representations, for computing
representations (i.e., inference), and the geometrical connections between
representation learning, density estimation and manifold learning
How do you say ‘hello’? Personality impressions from brief novel voices
On hearing a novel voice, listeners readily form personality impressions of that speaker. Accurate or not, these impressions are known to affect subsequent interactions; yet the underlying psychological and acoustical bases remain poorly understood. Furthermore, hitherto studies have focussed on extended speech as opposed to analysing the instantaneous impressions we obtain from first experience. In this paper, through a mass online rating experiment, 320 participants rated 64 sub-second vocal utterances of the word ‘hello’ on one of 10 personality traits. We show that: (1) personality judgements of brief utterances from unfamiliar speakers are consistent across listeners; (2) a two-dimensional ‘social voice space’ with axes mapping Valence (Trust, Likeability) and Dominance, each driven by differing combinations of vocal acoustics, adequately summarises ratings in both male and female voices; and (3) a positive combination of Valence and Dominance results in increased perceived male vocal Attractiveness, whereas perceived female vocal Attractiveness is largely controlled by increasing Valence. Results are discussed in relation to the rapid evaluation of personality and, in turn, the intent of others, as being driven by survival mechanisms via approach or avoidance behaviours. These findings provide empirical bases for predicting personality impressions from acoustical analyses of short utterances and for generating desired personality impressions in artificial voices
- …