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Visual scene understanding often requires the processing of human-object interactions. Here we seek to explore if and how well Deep Neural Network (DNN) models capture features similar to the brain's representation of humans, objects, and…
Neural codes allow the brain to represent, process, and store information about the world. Combinatorial codes, comprised of binary patterns of neural activity, encode information via the collective behavior of populations of neurons. A…
Can neural networks learn goal-directed behaviour using similar strategies to the brain, by combining the relationships between the current state of the organism and the consequences of future actions? Recent work has shown that recurrent…
In this work, we develop convolutional neural generative coding (Conv-NGC), a generalization of predictive coding to the case of convolution/deconvolution-based computation. Specifically, we concretely implement a flexible…
Human beings can imagine the colours of a grayscale image with no particular effort thanks to their ability of semantic feature extraction. Can an autonomous system achieve that? Can it hallucinate plausible and vibrant colours? This is the…
Conceptual and mathematical models of neurons have lagged behind empirical understanding for decades. Here we extend previous work in modeling biological systems with fully scale-independent quantum information-theoretic tools to develop a…
Quantum optical neurons (QONs) are emerging as promising computational units that leverage photonic interference to perform neural operations in an energy-efficient and physically grounded manner. Building on recent theoretical proposals,…
This Dissertation is comprised of two main projects, addressing questions in neuroscience through applications of generative modeling. Project #1 (Chapter 4) explores how neurons encode features of the external world. I combine Helmholtz's…
We propose a novel deep network architecture for grayscale and color image denoising that is based on a non-local image model. Our motivation for the overall design of the proposed network stems from variational methods that exploit the…
How does the brain encode spatial structure? One way is through hippocampal neurons called place cells, which become associated to convex regions of space known as their receptive fields: each place cell fires at a high rate precisely when…
Most cortical inhibitory cell types exclusively express one of three genes, parvalbumin, somatostatin and 5HT3a. The visual responses of cortical neurons are affected not only by local cues, but also by visual context. As the inhibitory…
While many image colorization algorithms have recently shown the capability of producing plausible color versions from gray-scale photographs, they still suffer from the problems of context confusion and edge color bleeding. To address…
Top-down feedback in cortex is critical for guiding sensory processing, which has prominently been formalized in the theory of hierarchical predictive coding (hPC). However, experimental evidence for error units, which are central to the…
Why do neurons encode information the way they do? Normative answers to this question model neural activity as the solution to an optimisation problem; for example, the celebrated efficient coding hypothesis frames neural activity as the…
Hippocampal neurons track positions of self, others, and gaze direction. However, it is unclear how their respective neural codes differ enough to avoid confusion while allowing for abstraction. We recorded from populations of hippocampal…
We report a framework based on a generative adversarial network (GAN) that performs high-fidelity color image reconstruction using a single hologram of a sample that is illuminated simultaneously by light at three different wavelengths. The…
Deep learning models have achieved remarkable success across various domains, yet their learned representations and decision-making processes remain largely opaque and hard to interpret. This work introduces HOLE (Homological Observation of…
Mechanistic interpretability aims to understand how models store representations by breaking down neural networks into interpretable units. However, the occurrence of polysemantic neurons, or neurons that respond to multiple unrelated…
In this paper, we present a novel method for analysis and segmentation of laminar structure of the cortex based on tissue characteristics whose change across the gray matter underlies distinctive between cortical layers. We develop and…
A neuron transforms its input into output spikes, and this transformation is the basic unit of computation in the nervous system. The spiking response of the neuron to a complex, time-varying input can be predicted from the detailed…