8,682 research outputs found
The equivalence of information-theoretic and likelihood-based methods for neural dimensionality reduction
Stimulus dimensionality-reduction methods in neuroscience seek to identify a
low-dimensional space of stimulus features that affect a neuron's probability
of spiking. One popular method, known as maximally informative dimensions
(MID), uses an information-theoretic quantity known as "single-spike
information" to identify this space. Here we examine MID from a model-based
perspective. We show that MID is a maximum-likelihood estimator for the
parameters of a linear-nonlinear-Poisson (LNP) model, and that the empirical
single-spike information corresponds to the normalized log-likelihood under a
Poisson model. This equivalence implies that MID does not necessarily find
maximally informative stimulus dimensions when spiking is not well described as
Poisson. We provide several examples to illustrate this shortcoming, and derive
a lower bound on the information lost when spiking is Bernoulli in discrete
time bins. To overcome this limitation, we introduce model-based dimensionality
reduction methods for neurons with non-Poisson firing statistics, and show that
they can be framed equivalently in likelihood-based or information-theoretic
terms. Finally, we show how to overcome practical limitations on the number of
stimulus dimensions that MID can estimate by constraining the form of the
non-parametric nonlinearity in an LNP model. We illustrate these methods with
simulations and data from primate visual cortex
Electrostatic Field Classifier for Deficient Data
This paper investigates the suitability of recently developed models based on the physical
field phenomena for classification problems with incomplete datasets. An original approach
to exploiting incomplete training data with missing features and labels, involving extensive use
of electrostatic charge analogy, has been proposed. Classification of incomplete patterns has been
investigated using a local dimensionality reduction technique, which aims at exploiting all available
information rather than trying to estimate the missing values. The performance of all proposed
methods has been tested on a number of benchmark datasets for a wide range of missing data scenarios
and compared to the performance of some standard techniques. Several modifications of the
original electrostatic field classifier aiming at improving speed and robustness in higher dimensional
spaces are also discussed
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