How do neurons operate on sparse distributed representations? A mathematical theory of sparsity, neurons and active dendrites. (arXiv:1601.00720v1 [q-bio.NC])

We propose a formal mathematical model for sparse representations in neocortex based on a neuron model and associated operations. The design of our model neuron is inspired by recent experimental findings on active dendritic processing and NMDA spikes in pyramidal neurons. We derive a number of scaling laws that characterize the accuracy of such neurons in detecting activation patterns in a neuronal population under adverse conditions. We introduce the union property which shows that synapses for multiple patterns can be randomly mixed together within a segment and still lead to highly accurate recognition. We describe simulation results that provide overall insight into sparse representations as well as two primary results. First we show that pattern recognition by a neuron can be extremely accurate and robust with high dimensional sparse inputs even when using a tiny number of synapses to recognize large patterns. Second, equations representing recognition accuracy of a dendrite predict optimal NMDA spiking thresholds under a generous set of assumptions. The prediction tightly matches NMDA spiking thresholds measured in the literature. Our model neuron matches many of the known properties of pyramidal neurons. As such the theory provides a unified and practical mathematical framework for understanding the benefits and limits of sparse representations in cortical networks.

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