Category Archives: Neural Networks

Neural Networks

Balanced Inhibition-Excitation

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Another idea that I consider ill-conceived is the notion that neural networks need to have balanced inhibition-excitation. This means that with every rise (or fall) of overall excitation of the network, inhibition has to closely match it.

On the one hand, this looks like a truism: excitation activates inhibitory neurons and therefore larger excitation means larger inhibition, which reduces excitation. However, the idea in the present form stems from neural modeling: conventional neural networks with their uniform neurons and dispersed connectivity easily either stop spiking because of a lack of activity, or spike at very high rates and ‘fill up’ the whole network to capacity. It is difficult to tune them to the space in-between, and difficult to keep them in this space. Therefore it was postulated that biological neural networks face the same problem and that here also excitation and inhibition need to be closely matched.

First of all inhibition is not simple. Inhibitory-inhibitory interactions make the simplistic explanation unrealistic, and the many different types of inhibitory neurons that have evolved again make it difficult to implement the balanced inhibition-excitation concept.

Secondly, more evolved and realistic neural networks do not face the tuning problem, they are resilient even with larger and smaller differences between inhibition and excitation.

Finally, there are a number of experimental findings showing that it is possible to tune inhibition in the absence of tuning excitation. In a coupled negative feedback model this simply means that the equilibrium values change. But some excitatory neurons may evolve strong activity without directly increasing their own inhibition. Inhibition needs not to be uniformly coupled to excitation, if a network can tolerate fairly large fluctuations in excitation.

Ubiquitous interneurons may still be responsible for guarding lower and upper levels of excitation (‘range-control’). This range may still be variably positioned.

In the next post I want to discuss an interesting form of regulation of inhibitory neurons, which also does not fit well  with the concept of balanced inhibition-excitation.

 

Neural Networks, Neuromodulation, Synaptic Plasticity

Dopamine and Neuromodulation

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Some time ago, I suggested that equating dopamine with reward learning was a bad idea. Why?
First of all, because it is a myopic view of the role of neuromodulation in the brain, (and also in invertebrate animals). There are at least 4 centrally released neuromodulators, they all act on G-protein-coupled receptors (some not exclusively), and they all have effects on neural processing as well as memory. Furthermore there are myriad neuromodulators which are locally  released, and which have similar effects, all acting through different receptors, but on the same internal pathways, activating G-proteins.

Reward learning means that reward increases dopamine release, and that increased dopamine availability will increase synaptic plasticity.

That was always simplistic and like any half-truth misleading.

Any neuromodulator is variable in its release properties. This results from the activity of its NM-producing neurons, such as in locus ceruleus, dorsal raphe, VTA, medulla etc., which receive input, including from each other, and secondly from control of axonal and presynaptic release, which is independent of the central signal. So there is local modulation of release. Given a signal which increases e.g. firing in the VTA, we still need to know which target areas are at the present time responsive, and at which synapses precisely the signal is directed. It depends on the local state of the network, how the global signal is interpreted.

Secondly, the activation of G-protein coupled receptors is definitely an important ingredient in activating the intracellular pathways that are necessary for the expression of plasticity. Roughly, a concurrent activation of calcium and cAMP/PKA (within 10s or so) has been found to be supportive or necessary of inducing synaptic plasticity. However, dopamine, like the other centrally released neuromodulators, acts through antagonistic receptors, increasing or decreasing PKA, increasing or reducing plasticity. It is again local computation which will decide the outcome of NM signaling at each site.

So, is there a take-home message, rivaling the simplicity of dopamine=reward?

NMs alter representations (=thought) and memorize them (=memory) but the interpretation is flexible at local sites (=learn and re-learn).

Dopamine alters thought and memory in a way that can be learned and re-learned.

Back in 1995 I came up with the idea of analysing neuromodulators like dopamine as a method of introducing global parameters into neural networks, which were considered at the time to admit only local, distributed computations. It seemed to me then, as now, that the capacity for global control of huge brain areas (serotonergic, cholinergic, dopaminergic and noradrenergic systems), was really what set neuromodulation apart from the neurotransmitters glutamate and GABA. There is no need to single out dopamine as the one central signal, which induces simple increases in its target areas, when in reality changes happen through antagonistic receptors, and there are many central signals.  Also, the concept of hedonistic reward is badly defined and essentially restricted to Pavlovian conditioning for animals and addiction in humans.

Since the only known global parameter in neural networks at the time occurred in reinforcement learning, some people created a match, using dopamine as the missing global reinforcement signal (Schultz W, Dayan P, Montague PR. A neural substrate of prediction and reward. Science. 1997). That could not work, because reinforcement learning requires proper discounting within a decision tree. But the idea stuck. Ever since I have been upset at this primitive oversimplification. Bad ideas in neuroscience.

Scheler, G and Fellous, J-M: Dopamine modulation of prefrontal delay activity- reverberatory activity and sharpness of tuning curves.  Neurocomputing, 2001.

Scheler, G. and Schumann, J: Presynaptic modulation as fast synaptic switching: state-dependent modulation of task performance. Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks 2003, Volume: 1. DOI: 10.1109/IJCNN.2003.1223347

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Bad Ideas in Neuroscience

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balanced excitation inhibition

dopamine=reward learning

hidden layers

explaining attention by top-down and bottom-up processes

I should collect some more. Why are they bad? Because they are half-truths. There is “something” right about these ideas, but as scientific concepts, the way they are currently defined, I think they are wrong. Need to be replaced.

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The LTP/LTD hypothesis of memory storage

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In a classical neural network, where storage relies only on synapses, all memory is always present. Synaptic connections have specific weights, and any processing event uses them with all of the memory involved.

It could be of course that in a processing event only small regions of the brain network are being used, such that the rest of the connections form a hidden structure, a reservoir, a store or repository of unused information. Such models exist.

There is a real issue with stable pattern storage of a large number of patterns with a realistic amount of interference in a synaptic memory model. Classification, such as recognition of a word shape can be done very well, but storing 10,000 words and using them appropriately seems difficult. Yet that is still a small vocabulary for a human memory.

Another solution is conditional memory, i.e. storage that is only accessed when activated, which otherwise remains silent. Neurons offer many possibilities for storing memory other than at the strength of a synapse, and it should be worthwhile investigating if any of this may be exploited in a theoretical model.

Neural Networks

Neural Coding

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To understand neural coding, we have to regard the relationship of synchronized membrane potentials (local field potentials) and the firing of the individual neuron. We have two different processes here, because the firing of the single neuron is not determined simply by the membrane potential exceeding a fixed threshold. Rather, the membrane potential’s fluctuation does not predict the individual neuron’s firing, because the neuron has a dynamic, flexible firing threshold that is determined by its own internal parameters. Also, the membrane potential is subject to synchronization by direct contact between membranes, it is not necessarily or primarily driven by synaptic input or neuronal spiking. Similarly, HahnG2014(Kumar) have noted that membrane synchronization cannot be explained from a spiking neural network.
The determination of an individual neuron’s firing threshold is a highly dynamic process, i.e. the neuron constantly changes its conditions for firing without necessarily disrupting its participation in ongoing membrane synchronization processes. In other words, membrane potential fluctuations are determined by synaptic input as well as local synchronization processes, and spikes depend on membrane potentials filtered by a dynamic, individually adjustable firing threshold.

coding1

The model for a neural coding device contains the following:

A neuronal membrane that is driven by synaptic input and synchronized by local interaction (both excitatory and inhibitory)
A spiking threshold with internal dynamics, possibly within an individual range, which determines spiking from membrane potential fluctuations.

In this model the neural code is determined by at least three factors: synaptic input, local synchronization, and firing threshold value. We may assume that local synchronization acts as a filter for signal loss, i.e. it unifies and diminishes differences in synaptic input. Firing thresholds act towards individualization, adding information from stored memory. The whole set-up acts to filter the synaptic input pattern towards a more predictable output pattern.