Related papers: Obstructions to convexity in neural codes
This paper presents the input convex neural network architecture. These are scalar-valued (potentially deep) neural networks with constraints on the network parameters such that the output of the network is a convex function of (some of)…
Neurons in the visual cortex respond best to rod-like stimuli of given orientation. While the preferred orientation varies continuously across most of the cortex, there are prominent pinwheel centers around which all orientations a re…
Current work on human-machine alignment aims at understanding machine-learned latent spaces and their correspondence to human representations. G{\"a}rdenfors' conceptual spaces is a prominent framework for understanding human…
We propose a normative model for spatial representation in the hippocampal formation that combines optimality principles, such as maximizing coding range and spatial information per neuron, with an algebraic framework for computing in…
Although it seems counter-intuitive, categorical colours do not exist as external physical entities but are very much the product of our brains. Our cortical machinery segments the world and associate objects to specific colour terms, which…
Information encoding in the nervous system is supported through the precise spike-timings of neurons; however, an understanding of the underlying processes by which such representations are formed in the first place remains unclear. Here we…
Predictive coding has emerged as an influential normative model of neural computation, with numerous extensions and applications. As such, much effort has been put into mapping PC faithfully onto the cortex, but there are issues that remain…
When seeing a new object, humans can immediately recognize it across different retinal locations: the internal object representation is invariant to translation. It is commonly believed that Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are…
Neuronal cell bodies mostly reside in the cerebral cortex. The study of this thin and highly convoluted surface is essential for understanding how the brain works. The analysis of surface data is, however, challenging due to the high…
We establish how a higher local field can be described as a locally convex vector space once an embedding of a local field into it has been fixed. This extends previous results that had been obtained in the two-dimensional case. In…
Exploiting data invariances is crucial for efficient learning in both artificial and biological neural circuits. Understanding how neural networks can discover appropriate representations capable of harnessing the underlying symmetries of…
Understanding how biological constraints shape neural computation is a central goal of computational neuroscience. Spatially embedded recurrent neural networks provide a promising avenue to study how modelled constraints shape the combined…
Although artificial neural networks have shown great promise in applications including computer vision and speech recognition, there remains considerable practical and theoretical difficulty in optimizing their parameters. The seemingly…
This PhD thesis is focused on the central idea that single neurons in the brain should be regarded as temporally precise and highly complex spatio-temporal pattern recognizers. This is opposed to the prevalent view of biological neurons as…
Motivated by a wide-spread use of convex optimization techniques, convexity properties of bit error rate of the maximum likelihood detector operating in the AWGN channel are studied for arbitrary constellations and bit mappings, which also…
We represent the sequence of fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) brain volumes recorded during a cognitive stimulus by a graph which consists of a set of local meshes. The corresponding cognitive process, encoded in the brain, is…
There is a hierarchy of structure conditions for convex sets. In this paper we study a recently defined [3, 8, 9] condition called locally nonconical convexity (abbreviated LNC). Is is easy to show that every strictly convex set is LNC, as…
Computational intractability has for decades motivated the development of a plethora of methodologies that mainly aimed at a quality-time trade-off. The use of Machine Learning techniques has finally emerged as one of the possible tools to…
Microscopic analysis of histological sections is considered the "gold standard" to verify structural parcellations in the human brain. Its high resolution allows the study of laminar and columnar patterns of cell distributions, which build…
The brain is targeted for processing temporal sequence information. It remains largely unclear how the brain learns to store and retrieve sequence memories. Here, we study how recurrent networks of binary neurons learn sequence attractors…