The quality and complexity of pairwise maximum entropy models for large cortical populations

by Valdemar Karg ård Olsen, Jonathan R. Whitlock, Yasser Roudi

We investigate the ability of the pairwise maximum entropy (PME) model to describe the spiking activity of large populations of neurons recorded from the visual, auditory, motor, and somatosensory cortices. To quantify this performance, we use (1) Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergences, (2) the extent to which the pairwise model predicts third-order correlations, and (3) its ability to predict the probability that multiple neurons are simultaneously active. We compare these with the performance of a model with independent neurons and study the relationship between the different performance measures, while varying the population size, mean firing rate of the chosen population, and the bin size used for binarizing the data. We confirm the previously reported excellent performance of the PME model for small population sizesN

Source: PLoS Computational Biology - May 2, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Valdemar Karg ård Olsen Source Type: research