Decorrelation of Neutral Vector Variables: Theory and Applications

In this paper, we propose novel strategies for neutral vector variable decorrelation. Two fundamental invertible transformations, namely serial nonlinear transformation and parallel nonlinear transformation, are proposed to carry out the decorrelation. For a neutral vector variable, which is not multivariate Gaussian distributed, the conventional principal component analysis (PCA) cannot yield mutually independent scalar variables. With the two proposed transformations, a highly negatively correlated neutral vector can be transformed to a set of mutually independent scalar variables with the same degrees of freedom. We also evaluate the decorrelation performances for the vectors generated from a single Dirichlet distribution and a mixture of Dirichlet distributions. The mutual independence is verified with the distance correlation measurement. The advantages of the proposed decorrelation strategies are intensively studied and demonstrated with synthesized data and practical application evaluations

Computationally efficient inference for latent position network models

Latent position models are widely used for the analysis of networks in a variety of research fields. In fact, these models possess a number of desirable theoretical properties, and are particularly easy to interpret. However, statistical methodologies to fit these models generally incur a computational cost which grows with the square of the number of nodes in the graph. This makes the analysis of large social networks impractical. In this paper, we propose a new method characterised by a linear computational complexity, which can be used to fit latent position models on networks of several tens of thousands nodes. Our approach relies on an approximation of the likelihood function, where the amount of noise introduced by the approximation can be arbitrarily reduced at the expense of computational efficiency. We establish several theoretical results that show how the likelihood error propagates to the invariant distribution of the Markov chain Monte Carlo sampler. In particular, we demonstrate that one can achieve a substantial reduction in computing time and still obtain a good estimate of the latent structure. Finally, we propose applications of our method to simulated networks and to a large coauthorships network, highlighting the usefulness of our approach.Comment: 39 pages, 10 figures, 1 tabl

Nonlinear brain dynamics as macroscopic manifestation of underlying many-body field dynamics

Neural activity patterns related to behavior occur at many scales in time and space from the atomic and molecular to the whole brain. Here we explore the feasibility of interpreting neurophysiological data in the context of many-body physics by using tools that physicists have devised to analyze comparable hierarchies in other fields of science. We focus on a mesoscopic level that offers a multi-step pathway between the microscopic functions of neurons and the macroscopic functions of brain systems revealed by hemodynamic imaging. We use electroencephalographic (EEG) records collected from high-density electrode arrays fixed on the epidural surfaces of primary sensory and limbic areas in rabbits and cats trained to discriminate conditioned stimuli (CS) in the various modalities. High temporal resolution of EEG signals with the Hilbert transform gives evidence for diverse intermittent spatial patterns of amplitude (AM) and phase modulations (PM) of carrier waves that repeatedly re-synchronize in the beta and gamma ranges at near zero time lags over long distances. The dominant mechanism for neural interactions by axodendritic synaptic transmission should impose distance-dependent delays on the EEG oscillations owing to finite propagation velocities. It does not. EEGs instead show evidence for anomalous dispersion: the existence in neural populations of a low velocity range of information and energy transfers, and a high velocity range of the spread of phase transitions. This distinction labels the phenomenon but does not explain it. In this report we explore the analysis of these phenomena using concepts of energy dissipation, the maintenance by cortex of multiple ground states corresponding to AM patterns, and the exclusive selection by spontaneous breakdown of symmetry (SBS) of single states in sequences.Comment: 31 page

Modeling Network Populations via Graph Distances

This article introduces a new class of models for multiple networks. The core idea is to parametrize a distribution on labelled graphs in terms of a Fr\'{e}chet mean graph (which depends on a user-specified choice of metric or graph distance) and a parameter that controls the concentration of this distribution about its mean. Entropy is the natural parameter for such control, varying from a point mass concentrated on the Fr\'{e}chet mean itself to a uniform distribution over all graphs on a given vertex set. We provide a hierarchical Bayesian approach for exploiting this construction, along with straightforward strategies for sampling from the resultant posterior distribution. We conclude by demonstrating the efficacy of our approach via simulation studies and two multiple-network data analysis examples: one drawn from systems biology and the other from neuroscience.Comment: 33 pages, 8 figure