In progress

The ability to discriminate visual stimuli is constrained by their retinal representations. Previous studies of visual discriminability were limited to either low-dimensional artificial stimuli or theoretical considerations without a realistic model. Here we propose a novel framework for understanding stimulus discriminability achieved by retinal representations of naturalistic stimuli with the method of information geometry. To model the joint probability distribution of neural responses conditioned on the stimulus, we created a stochastic encoding model of a population of salamander retinal ganglion cells based on a three-layer convolutional neural network model. This model not only accurately captured the mean response to natural scenes but also a variety of second-order statistics. With the model and the proposed theory, we are able to compute the Fisher information metric over stimuli and study the most discriminable stimulus directions…

The visual system processes stimuli over a wide range of spatiotemporal scales, with individual neurons receiving input from tens of thousands of neurons whose dynamics range from milliseconds to tens of seconds. This poses a challenge to create models that both accurately capture visual computations and are mechanistically interpretable. Here we present a model of salamander retinal ganglion cell spiking responses recorded with a multielectrode array that captures natural scene responses and slow adaptive dynamics. The model consists of a three-layer convolutional neural network (CNN) modified to include local recurrent synaptic dynamics taken from a linear-nonlinear-kinetic (LNK) model...

Paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9723187

The famous supervised task-driven model for IT cortex was proposed in 2014 (https://www.pnas.org/content/111/23/8619.short). Here we follow this work and propose a semi-supervised learning model which only needs part of the labels of training images, which is closer to the reality in human development. 

A four-stroke quantum engine which alternately interacts with a measurement apparatus and a single heat bath is discussed in detail with respect to the average work and heat as well as to the fluctuations of work and heat. The efficiency and the reliability of such an engine with a harmonic oscillator as working substance are analyzed under different conditions. For imperfect thermalization strokes of finite duration also the power of the engine is analyzed. A comparison with a two-temperature Otto engine is provided in the particular case of adiabatic work and ideal thermalization strokes.

Paper: https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.98.042122

We study the Fluctuation Theorem for some interesting systems: system interacting with an information reservoir, copolymerization process, and irreversible computation....