A Parallel Gamma Sampling Implementation

Scott LindermanComputation, StatisticsLeave a Comment

I don’t have a favorite distribution, but if I had to pick one, I’d say the gamma.  Why not the Gaussian? Because everyone loves the Gaussian! But when you want a prior distribution for the mean of your Poisson, or the variance of your Normal, who’s there to pick up the mess when the Gaussian lets you down? The gamma. When you’re trying to actually sample that Dirichlet that makes such a nice prior distribution for categorical distributions over your favorite distribution (how about that tongue twister), who’s there to help you?  You guessed it, the gamma. But if you want a distribution that you can sample millions of times during each iteration of your MCMC algorithm, well, now the … Read More

Priors for Functional and Effective Connectivity

Scott LindermanMachine Learning, NeuroscienceLeave a Comment

In my previous post I suggested that models of neural computation can be expressed as prior distributions over functional and effective connectivity, and with this common specification we can compare models by their posterior probability given neural recordings. I would like to explore this idea in more detail by first describing functional and effective connectivity and then considering how various models could be expressed in this framework. Functional and effective connectivity are concepts originating in neuroimaging and spike train analysis. Functional connectivity measures the correlation between neurophysiological events (e.g. spikes on neurons or BOLD signal in fMRI voxels), whereas effective connectivity is a statement about the causal nature of a system. Effective connectivity captures the influence one neurophysiological event has … Read More

The “Computation” in Computational Neuroscience

Scott LindermanMachine Learning, NeuroscienceLeave a Comment

My aim in this introductory post is to provide context for future contributions by sharing my thoughts on the role of computer scientists in the study of brain, particularly in the field of computational neuroscience. For a field with “computation” in the name, it seems that computer scientists are underrepresented. I believe there are significant open questions in neuroscience which are best addressed by those who study the theory of computation, learning, and algorithms, and the systems upon which they are premised. In my opinion “computational neuroscience” has two definitions: the first, from Marr, is the study of the computational capabilities of the brain, their algorithmic details, and their implementation in neural circuits; the second, stemming from machine learning, is … Read More