Towards a "universal translator" for neural dynamics at single-cell, single-spike resolution

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Yizi, Wang, Yanchen, Jimenez-Beneto, Donato, Wang, Zixuan, Azabou, Mehdi, Richards, Blake, Winter, Olivier, Laboratory, International Brain, Dyer, Eva, Paninski, Liam, Hurwitz, Cole
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Zhang, Yizi
Wang, Yanchen
Jimenez-Beneto, Donato
Wang, Zixuan
Azabou, Mehdi
Richards, Blake
Winter, Olivier
Laboratory, International Brain
Dyer, Eva
Paninski, Liam
Hurwitz, Cole
author_facet Zhang, Yizi
Wang, Yanchen
Jimenez-Beneto, Donato
Wang, Zixuan
Azabou, Mehdi
Richards, Blake
Winter, Olivier
Laboratory, International Brain
Dyer, Eva
Paninski, Liam
Hurwitz, Cole
contents Neuroscience research has made immense progress over the last decade, but our understanding of the brain remains fragmented and piecemeal: the dream of probing an arbitrary brain region and automatically reading out the information encoded in its neural activity remains out of reach. In this work, we build towards a first foundation model for neural spiking data that can solve a diverse set of tasks across multiple brain areas. We introduce a novel self-supervised modeling approach for population activity in which the model alternates between masking out and reconstructing neural activity across different time steps, neurons, and brain regions. To evaluate our approach, we design unsupervised and supervised prediction tasks using the International Brain Laboratory repeated site dataset, which is comprised of Neuropixels recordings targeting the same brain locations across 48 animals and experimental sessions. The prediction tasks include single-neuron and region-level activity prediction, forward prediction, and behavior decoding. We demonstrate that our multi-task-masking (MtM) approach significantly improves the performance of current state-of-the-art population models and enables multi-task learning. We also show that by training on multiple animals, we can improve the generalization ability of the model to unseen animals, paving the way for a foundation model of the brain at single-cell, single-spike resolution.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_14668
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards a "universal translator" for neural dynamics at single-cell, single-spike resolution
Zhang, Yizi
Wang, Yanchen
Jimenez-Beneto, Donato
Wang, Zixuan
Azabou, Mehdi
Richards, Blake
Winter, Olivier
Laboratory, International Brain
Dyer, Eva
Paninski, Liam
Hurwitz, Cole
Neurons and Cognition
Machine Learning
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Neuroscience research has made immense progress over the last decade, but our understanding of the brain remains fragmented and piecemeal: the dream of probing an arbitrary brain region and automatically reading out the information encoded in its neural activity remains out of reach. In this work, we build towards a first foundation model for neural spiking data that can solve a diverse set of tasks across multiple brain areas. We introduce a novel self-supervised modeling approach for population activity in which the model alternates between masking out and reconstructing neural activity across different time steps, neurons, and brain regions. To evaluate our approach, we design unsupervised and supervised prediction tasks using the International Brain Laboratory repeated site dataset, which is comprised of Neuropixels recordings targeting the same brain locations across 48 animals and experimental sessions. The prediction tasks include single-neuron and region-level activity prediction, forward prediction, and behavior decoding. We demonstrate that our multi-task-masking (MtM) approach significantly improves the performance of current state-of-the-art population models and enables multi-task learning. We also show that by training on multiple animals, we can improve the generalization ability of the model to unseen animals, paving the way for a foundation model of the brain at single-cell, single-spike resolution.
title Towards a "universal translator" for neural dynamics at single-cell, single-spike resolution
topic Neurons and Cognition
Machine Learning
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.14668