High-Dimensional Statistical Analysis of Neural Signals

Jie Fu National University of Singapore https://sites.google.com/site/bigaidream/ The progress in neuroscience can no longer be made by considering problems whose descriptions require only a small number of variables, and the ability to measure and understand the relationships between high-dimensional spaces of stimuli and neuronal activity patterns is crucial for understanding how networks of neurons store and process information [1]. Though improving upon physical devices is of course indispensability and still an active scientific topic, developing appropriate methods to record, analyze and understand the resulting observations is also needed [2]. However, due to the curse of dimensionality, it is difficult to measure and find statistical relationships between patterns as their dimensionality increases [1]. Many natural signals are sparse or compressible in the sense that they have concise representations when expressed in the proper basis [3]. Neural signal acquisition, spike sorting, neural decoding and control signal generation form the four major components of prosthetic system [3]. My research would focus on the development of new neurostatistical methodologies and algorithms that aim at uncovering meaningful spatiotemporal patterns of high-dimensional neural activity, especially their relationship to intended action and behavioral states, which can potentially improve the performance of neural decoding component. They could provide a critical link between experimental data and theoretical models. For example, a Multi-Electrode Array (MEA) records action potential from a population of neurons providing dynamic perspectives into brain functions [4]. The general techniques for dataset with temporal dependencies analysis can be broadly classified into two approaches: pattern discovery and learning generative statistical models [5]. I am more interested in developing statistical models which provide a principled framework to describe the statistics that govern data generation, and applying them to real neural data.
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