Learning place cells, grid cells and invariances with excitatory and inhibitory plasticity

Neurons in the hippocampus and adjacent brain areas show a large diversity in their tuning to location and head direction, and the underlying circuit mechanisms are not yet resolved. In particular, it is unclear why certain cell types are selective to one spatial variable, but invariant to another. For example, place cells are typically invariant to head direction. We propose that all observed spatial tuning patterns – in both their selectivity and their invariance – arise from the same mechanism: Excitatory and inhibitory synaptic plasticity driven by the spatial tuning statistics of synaptic inputs. Using simulations and a mathematical analysis, we show that combined excitatory and inhibitory plasticity can lead to localized, grid-like or invariant activity. Combinations of different input statistics along different spatial dimensions reproduce all major spatial tuning patterns observed in rodents. Our proposed model is robust to changes in parameters, develops patterns on behavioral timescales and makes distinctive experimental predictions.BMBF, 01GQ1201, Lernen und Gedächtnis in balancierten Systeme

Brain Learning, Attention, and Consciousness

The processes whereby our brains continue to learn about a changing world in a stable fashion throughout life are proposed to lead to conscious experiences. These processes include the learning of top-down expectations, the matching of these expectations against bottom-up data, the focusing of attention upon the expected clusters of information, and the development of resonant states between bottom-up and top-down processes as they reach an attentive consensus between what is expected and what is there in the outside world. It is suggested that all conscious states in the brain are resonant states, and that these resonant states trigger learning of sensory and cognitive representations. The model which summarize these concepts are therefore called Adaptive Resonance Theory, or ART, models. Psychophysical and neurobiological data in support of ART are presented from early vision, visual object recognition, auditory streaming, variable-rate speech perception, somatosensory perception, and cognitive-emotional interactions, among others. It is noted that ART mechanisms seem to be operative at all levels of the visual system, and it is proposed how these mechanisms are realized by known laminar circuits of visual cortex. It is predicted that the same circuit realization of ART mechanisms will be found in the laminar circuits of all sensory and cognitive neocortex. Concepts and data are summarized concerning how some visual percepts may be visibly, or modally, perceived, whereas amoral percepts may be consciously recognized even though they are perceptually invisible. It is also suggested that sensory and cognitive processing in the What processing stream of the brain obey top-down matching and learning laws that arc often complementary to those used for spatial and motor processing in the brain's Where processing stream. This enables our sensory and cognitive representations to maintain their stability a.s we learn more about the world, while allowing spatial and motor representations to forget learned maps and gains that are no longer appropriate as our bodies develop and grow from infanthood to adulthood. Procedural memories are proposed to be unconscious because the inhibitory matching process that supports these spatial and motor processes cannot lead to resonance.Defense Advance Research Projects Agency; Office of Naval Research (N00014-95-1-0409, N00014-95-1-0657); National Science Foundation (IRI-97-20333

Self Organisation and Hierarchical Concept Representation in Networks of Spiking Neurons

The aim of this work is to introduce modular processing mechanisms for cortical functions implemented in networks of spiking neurons. Neural maps are a feature of cortical processing found to be generic throughout sensory cortical areas, and self-organisation to the fundamental properties of input spike trains has been shown to be an important property of cortical organisation. Additionally, oscillatory behaviour, temporal coding of information, and learning through spike timing dependent plasticity are all frequently observed in the cortex. The traditional self-organising map (SOM) algorithm attempts to capture the computational properties of this cortical self-organisation in a neural network. As such, a cognitive module for a spiking SOM using oscillations, phasic coding and STDP has been implemented. This model is capable of mapping to distributions of input data in a manner consistent with the traditional SOM algorithm, and of categorising generic input data sets. Higher-level cortical processing areas appear to feature a hierarchical category structure that is founded on a feature-based object representation. The spiking SOM model is therefore extended to facilitate input patterns in the form of sets of binary feature-object relations, such as those seen in the field of formal concept analysis. It is demonstrated that this extended model is capable of learning to represent the hierarchical conceptual structure of an input data set using the existing learning scheme. Furthermore, manipulations of network parameters allow the level of hierarchy used for either learning or recall to be adjusted, and the network is capable of learning comparable representations when trained with incomplete input patterns. Together these two modules provide related approaches to the generation of both topographic mapping and hierarchical representation of input spaces that can be potentially combined and used as the basis for advanced spiking neuron models of the learning of complex representations

Sensor encoding using lateral inhibited, self-organized cellular neural networks

The paper focuses on the division of the sensor field into subsets of sensor events and proposes the linear transformation with the smallest achievable error for reproduction: the transform coding approach using the principal component analysis (PCA). For the implementation of the PCA, this paper introduces a new symmetrical, lateral inhibited neural network model, proposes an objective function for it and deduces the corresponding learning rules. The necessary conditions for the learning rate and the inhibition parameter for balancing the crosscorrelations vs. the autocorrelations are computed. The simulation reveals that an increasing inhibition can speed up the convergence process in the beginning slightly. In the remaining paper, the application of the network in picture encoding is discussed. Here, the use of non-completely connected networks for the self-organized formation of templates in cellular neural networks is shown. It turns out that the self-organizing Kohonen map is just the non-linear, first order approximation of a general self-organizing scheme. Hereby, the classical transform picture coding is changed to a parallel, local model of linear transformation by locally changing sets of self-organized eigenvector projections with overlapping input receptive fields. This approach favors an effective, cheap implementation of sensor encoding directly on the sensor chip. Keywords: Transform coding, Principal component analysis, Lateral inhibited network, Cellular neural network, Kohonen map, Self-organized eigenvector jets

Brain at work : time, sparseness and superposition principles

Abstract : Many studies explored mechanisms through which the brain encodes sensory inputs allowing a coherent behavior. The brain could identify stimuli via a hierarchical stream of activity leading to a cardinal neuron responsive to one particular object. The opportunity to record from numerous neurons offered investigators the capability of examining simultaneously the functioning of many cells. These approaches suggested encoding processes that are parallel rather than serial. Binding the many features of a stimulus may be accomplished through an induced synchronization of cell’s action potentials. These interpretations are supported by experimental data and offer many advantages but also several shortcomings. We argue for a coding mechanism based on a sparse synchronization paradigm. We show that synchronization of spikes is a fast and efficient mode to encode the representation of objects based on feature bindings. We introduce the view that sparse synchronization coding presents an interesting venue in probing brain encoding mechanisms as it allows the functional establishment of multilayered and time-conditioned neuronal networks or multislice networks. We propose a model based on integrate-and-fire spiking neurons

The hippocampus and cerebellum in adaptively timed learning, recognition, and movement

The concepts of declarative memory and procedural memory have been used to distinguish two basic types of learning. A neural network model suggests how such memory processes work together as recognition learning, reinforcement learning, and sensory-motor learning take place during adaptive behaviors. To coordinate these processes, the hippocampal formation and cerebellum each contain circuits that learn to adaptively time their outputs. Within the model, hippocampal timing helps to maintain attention on motivationally salient goal objects during variable task-related delays, and cerebellar timing controls the release of conditioned responses. This property is part of the model's description of how cognitive-emotional interactions focus attention on motivationally valued cues, and how this process breaks down due to hippocampal ablation. The model suggests that the hippocampal mechanisms that help to rapidly draw attention to salient cues could prematurely release motor commands were not the release of these commands adaptively timed by the cerebellum. The model hippocampal system modulates cortical recognition learning without actually encoding the representational information that the cortex encodes. These properties avoid the difficulties faced by several models that propose a direct hippocampal role in recognition learning. Learning within the model hippocampal system controls adaptive timing and spatial orientation. Model properties hereby clarify how hippocampal ablations cause amnesic symptoms and difficulties with tasks which combine task delays, novelty detection, and attention towards goal objects amid distractions. When these model recognition, reinforcement, sensory-motor, and timing processes work together, they suggest how the brain can accomplish conditioning of multiple sensory events to delayed rewards, as during serial compound conditioning.Air Force Office of Scientific Research (F49620-92-J-0225, F49620-86-C-0037, 90-0128); Advanced Research Projects Agency (ONR N00014-92-J-4015); Office of Naval Research (N00014-91-J-4100, N00014-92-J-1309, N00014-92-J-1904); National Institute of Mental Health (MH-42900

Biologically Inspired Computer Vision/ Applications of Computational Models of Primate Visual Systems in Computer Vision and Image Processing

Biologically Inspired Computer VisionApplications of Computational Models of Primate Visual Systems in Computer Vision and Image Processing Reza Hojjaty Saeedy Abstract Biological vision systems are remarkable at extracting and analyzing the information that is essential for vital functional needs. They perform all these tasks with both high sensitivity and strong reliability. They can efficiently and quickly solve most of the difficult computa- tional problems that are still challenging for artificial systems, such as scene segmentation, 3D/depth perception, motion recognition, etc. So it is no surprise that biological vision systems have been a source of inspiration for computer vision problems. In this research, we aim to provide a computer vision task centric framework out of models primarily originating in biological vision studies. We try to address two specific tasks here: saliency detection and object classification. In both of these tasks we use features extracted from computational models of biological vision systems as a starting point for further processing. Saliency maps are 2D topographic maps that catch the most conspicuous regions of a scene, i.e. the pixels in an image that stand out against their neighboring pixels. So these maps can be thought of as representations of the human attention process and thus have a lot of applications in computer vision. We propose a cascade that combines two well- known computational models for perception of color and orientation in order to simulate the responses of the primary areas of the primate visual cortex. We use these responses as inputs to a spiking neural network(SNN) and finally the output of this SNN will serve as the input to our post-processing algorithm for saliency detection. Object classification/detection is the most studied task in computer vision and machine learning and it is interesting that while it looks trivial for humans it is a difficult problem for artificial systems. For this part of the thesis we also design a pipeline including feature extraction using biologically inspired systems, manifold learning for dimensionality reduction and self-organizing(vector quantization) neural network as a supervised method for prototype learning

Biologically Inspired Computer Vision/ Applications of Computational Models of Primate Visual Systems in Computer Vision and Image Processing

Biologically Inspired Computer VisionApplications of Computational Models of Primate Visual Systems in Computer Vision and Image Processing Reza Hojjaty Saeedy Abstract Biological vision systems are remarkable at extracting and analyzing the information that is essential for vital functional needs. They perform all these tasks with both high sensitivity and strong reliability. They can efficiently and quickly solve most of the difficult computa- tional problems that are still challenging for artificial systems, such as scene segmentation, 3D/depth perception, motion recognition, etc. So it is no surprise that biological vision systems have been a source of inspiration for computer vision problems. In this research, we aim to provide a computer vision task centric framework out of models primarily originating in biological vision studies. We try to address two specific tasks here: saliency detection and object classification. In both of these tasks we use features extracted from computational models of biological vision systems as a starting point for further processing. Saliency maps are 2D topographic maps that catch the most conspicuous regions of a scene, i.e. the pixels in an image that stand out against their neighboring pixels. So these maps can be thought of as representations of the human attention process and thus have a lot of applications in computer vision. We propose a cascade that combines two well- known computational models for perception of color and orientation in order to simulate the responses of the primary areas of the primate visual cortex. We use these responses as inputs to a spiking neural network(SNN) and finally the output of this SNN will serve as the input to our post-processing algorithm for saliency detection. Object classification/detection is the most studied task in computer vision and machine learning and it is interesting that while it looks trivial for humans it is a difficult problem for artificial systems. For this part of the thesis we also design a pipeline including feature extraction using biologically inspired systems, manifold learning for dimensionality reduction and self-organizing(vector quantization) neural network as a supervised method for prototype learning

Artificial ontogenesis: a connectionist model of development

This thesis suggests that ontogenetic adaptive processes are important for generating intelligent beha- viour. It is thus proposed that such processes, as they occur in nature, need to be modelled and that such a model could be used for generating artificial intelligence, and specifically robotic intelligence. Hence, this thesis focuses on how mechanisms of intelligence are specified.A major problem in robotics is the need to predefine the behaviour to be followed by the robot. This makes design intractable for all but the simplest tasks and results in controllers that are specific to that particular task and are brittle when faced with unforeseen circumstances. These problems can be resolved by providing the robot with the ability to adapt the rules it follows and to autonomously create new rules for controlling behaviour. This solution thus depends on the predefinition of how rules to control behaviour are to be learnt rather than the predefinition of rules for behaviour themselves.Learning new rules for behaviour occurs during the developmental process in biology. Changes in the structure of the cerebral 'cortex underly behavioural and cognitive development throughout infancy and beyond. The uniformity of the neocortex suggests that there is significant computational uniformity across the cortex resulting from uniform mechanisms of development, and holds out the possibility of a general model of development. Development is an interactive process between genetic predefinition and environmental influences. This interactive process is constructive: qualitatively new behaviours are learnt by using simple abilities as a basis for learning more complex ones. The progressive increase in competence, provided by development, may be essential to make tractable the process of acquiring higher -level abilities.While simple behaviours can be triggered by direct sensory cues, more complex behaviours require the use of more abstract representations. There is thus a need to find representations at the correct level of abstraction appropriate to controlling each ability. In addition, finding the correct level of abstrac- tion makes tractable the task of associating sensory representations with motor actions. Hence, finding appropriate representations is important both for learning behaviours and for controlling behaviours. Representations can be found by recording regularities in the world or by discovering re- occurring pat- terns through repeated sensory -motor interactions. By recording regularities within the representations thus formed, more abstract representations can be found. Simple, non -abstract, representations thus provide the basis for learning more complex, abstract, representations.A modular neural network architecture is presented as a basis for a model of development. The pat- tern of activity of the neurons in an individual network constitutes a representation of the input to that network. This representation is formed through a novel, unsupervised, learning algorithm which adjusts the synaptic weights to improve the representation of the input data. Representations are formed by neurons learning to respond to correlated sets of inputs. Neurons thus became feature detectors or pat- tern recognisers. Because the nodes respond to patterns of inputs they encode more abstract features of the input than are explicitly encoded in the input data itself. In this way simple representations provide the basis for learning more complex representations. The algorithm allows both more abstract represent- ations to be formed by associating correlated, coincident, features together, and invariant representations to be formed by associating correlated, sequential, features together.The algorithm robustly learns accurate and stable representations, in a format most appropriate to the structure of the input data received: it can represent both single and multiple input features in both the discrete and continuous domains, using either topologically or non -topologically organised nodes. The output of one neural network is used to provide inputs for other networks. The robustness of the algorithm enables each neural network to be implemented using an identical algorithm. This allows a modular `assembly' of neural networks to be used for learning more complex abilities: the output activations of a network can be used as the input to other networks which can then find representations of more abstract information within the same input data; and, by defining the output activations of neurons in certain networks to have behavioural consequences it is possible to learn sensory -motor associations, to enable sensory representations to be used to control behaviour