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Submitted by
Assigned_Reviewer_6
Q1: Comments to author(s).
First provide a summary of the paper, and then address the following
criteria: Quality, clarity, originality and significance. (For detailed
reviewing guidelines, see
http://nips.cc/PaperInformation/ReviewerInstructions)
The present paper continues a line of successful
previous papers dealing with the encoding of signals through the so-called
TEM (time encoding machine). The present paper is motivated by the recent
realization within the neuroscience community that most sensory processing
is in multi-modal, and that this occurs already at early stages of the
processing hierarchy. The signal processing advantages of such a scheme
are intuitively obvious, and the present paper contributes to
demonstrating a practical and mathematically well-founded approach. Such
an approach offers the potential advantage of natural hardware
implementation using low power elements. The mathematical framework
for signal representation is based on reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces,
specifically focusing here on trigonometric functions. The main
mathematical contributions appear in the form of two theorems, which
establish, respectively, the decoding property and the equivalence of
filter identification and neural encoding. Several examples are also
presented which demonstrate the effectiveness and power of the method.
This paper deals with an important and relevant problem in
computational neuroscience (and signal processing) and suggests a solid
and effective solution. Although the method proposed does not seem to be
biologically plausible form an algorithmic perspective, it does suggest
limits to what can be achieved with the setting delineated. I was missing
some discussion of robustness to noise and power consumption
considerations, which was one of the motivations for the paper.
Q2: Please summarize your review in 1-2
sentences
An extension of previous work providing a framework
for encoding and decoding multi-sensory continuous signals in the spike
domain. Precise mathematical characterizations and numerical
demonstrations suggest the method is well founded both mathematically and
algorithmically. Submitted by
Assigned_Reviewer_7
Q1: Comments to author(s).
First provide a summary of the paper, and then address the following
criteria: Quality, clarity, originality and significance. (For detailed
reviewing guidelines, see
http://nips.cc/PaperInformation/ReviewerInstructions)
Reviewer's response to the rebuttal:
'"Theorem 1 needs to be corrected/clarified." We
apologize for the confusion: part of the theorem was accidentally omitted.
The sufficient condition is to have a large enough population of
(different) neurons: N >= SUM_m[(2L_1+1)(2L_2+1)…(2L_{n_m-1} + 1)]. The
necessary condition is that the total number of spikes is greater than
(2L_{n_m}+1)*SUM_m[(2L_1+1)(2L_2+1)…(2L_{n_m-1} + 1)] +N"
OK,
that seems more acceptable, even though I don't fully understand the
condition -- what prevents these spikes from being completely synchronized
across neurons, and hence being uninformative?
'"…what would
happen if all filter kernels were the same? Then no matter how many
neurons you added, you would not gain any further information.” That
is not entirely correct. For example, if all filters are Dirac-delta
functions, the inputs are encoded directly without processing. However,
one can recover all inputs if the neurons have different parameters (e.g.,
bias, capacitance, threshold of the IAF neuron). Imposing linear
independence between kernels is another way to guarantee signal recovery.'
True, but in your definition of the IAF-TEM (eqn3 and following)
it does not appear that the neurons have different parameters, hence my
remark. Please say that somewhere.
Review for "Multisensory
Encoding, Decoding, and Identification"
The paper describes an
extension of Time Encoding Machines (TEM) to the
multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) setting, using the formalism of
Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces (RHKS). The approach is motivated from a
neuroscientific perspective: in the introduction, it is claimed
(correctly) that multisensory integration (and processing) provides many
benefits to organisms, but that it is still poorly understood. What
follows is a particular extension of TEMs to the MIMO setting, with
trignometric polynomials as basis functions. Necessary conditions for
perfect decoding and/or system identification are given. The feasibility
of the resulting algorithms are demonstrated on an audio/video decoding
task, and an audio/video encoder identification task. The paper concludes
with the remark that this work constitutes the first tractable
computational model for multisensory integration (which is wrong) and that
extensions to the noisy case would be straightforward.
Clarity:
The paper is mostly well written, even though the notation in section
3 is cumbersome, but I do not see how that could be avoided.
Originality: the paper's most original contribution is the
extensions of TEMs to the MIMO setting, the connection to the brain is
tenuous.
Quality: I believe some parts of the paper need to be
improved before publication.
Significance: from a technical
perspective, the paper demonstrates the feasibility of TEMs for
multi-modal encoding, which might prove useful. There is no clear
contribution to neural coding, other than the motivation in the
introduction.
Detailed comments:
line 100:
"bandlmited" -> bandlimited
line 137: j is the complex unit,
please say that somewhere.
line 144: the u_n in eqn.(1) are not
the same as the u_n^i in figure 1, right? I propose to use a different
letter.
line 166: "BIBO-stable" bounded-input-bounded-output?
please define.
line 166: "...finite temporal support of lenghth
S_i \leq T_i...": would that be spatio-temporal support for the video
filters in example 2?
line 177: Say here that the h_{l_1 \ldots
l_n} are the filter coefficients, to connect this formula to theorem 1.
line 182: "...IAF TEM...": IAF="integrate and fire"? Please
specify.
line 185: eqn. 3: what is the index k? From other
literature about IAF-TEMs, I would infer that it's the spike index? If
that is correct, please also say that t_k is a spike time, and that these
are strictly monotonically increasing with k etc. In fact, it would be
very useful if there was a short introduction to IAF-TEMs: up to here, the
paper only talks about continuous signals, now spikes are introduced (if I
interpret everything correctly).
line 195-195: "Then there exists
a number N ... can be perfectly recovered" this sounds like a sufficient
condition. But in the proof of this theorem 1, line 224ff: "A necessary
condition for the latter (solvability)...." so you only show a necessary
condition? Hence, theorem 1 remains unproven, I think. In fact, I wonder
what would happen if all filter kernels were the same? Then no matter how
many neurons you added, you would not gain any further information, thus
the signal recovery would not improve. To remedy this, I think the kernels
would have to be constrained by some sort of linear independence
condition, similar to [15].
figures 1,2,4: the v_i do not appear
anywhere else in the paper. Please clarify their purpose.
section
5, examples. The examples are instructive. But I wonder why you did not
choose a real video+audio for the examples -- it would have strengthened
the connection to neuroscience if you showed that your approach works
on relevant datasets.
line 417: "...the first tractable
computation model for multisensory integration..." wrong, see e.g. the
works by Wei & Koerding, or Ernst & Banks. Please remove this
sentence.
Q2: Please
summarize your review in 1-2 sentences
The extension of TEMs to the MIMO setting might be
interesting for technical applications and decoding in Neuroscience. I
believe Theorem 1 needs further clarification, but I am not entirely sure.
Submitted by
Assigned_Reviewer_8
Q1: Comments to author(s).
First provide a summary of the paper, and then address the following
criteria: Quality, clarity, originality and significance. (For detailed
reviewing guidelines, see
http://nips.cc/PaperInformation/ReviewerInstructions)
The authors model multisensory integration as a
multiplexing process.
This paper is incredibly dense. I can find
no fault with it's execution, but nor can I be sure that I follow it. What
does seem clear, however, is that there is absolutely no connection to
real biological systems, despite the claimed source of inspiration.
Q2: Please summarize your review in 1-2 sentences
A seemingly thorough application, with questionable
relevance or impact.
Q1:Author
rebuttal: Please respond to any concerns raised in the reviews. There are
no constraints on how you want to argue your case, except for the fact
that your text should be limited to a maximum of 6000 characters. Note
however that reviewers and area chairs are very busy and may not read long
vague rebuttals. It is in your own interest to be concise and to the
point.
We would like to thank reviewers for their comments
about the manuscript.
We were astonished to see statements
(A)“there is absolutely no connection to real biological
systems/Neuroscience” (B)“the work is incremental and unlikely to have
much impact”
(A): Our work has irrefutable connections to
biological systems/neuroscience as (i) It addresses an experimental
problem of jointly identifying receptive fields (RFs) of multisensory
neurons [1] and employs biophysically grounded models of neurons to do so.
Identification of multisensory RFs has not been possible since traditional
methods require separate stimulus presentations for each modality.
Importantly, joint (and not separate) stimulus presentation is often
needed in experiments to elicit a response. (ii) Multisensory
integration has been observed in many cortical areas, including the
superior colliculus, visual and auditory cortices. Precise rules by which
neurons combine signals across modalities remain unknown. We provided
tools for studying such rules within the spiking neuron framework.
(ii) RFs are well established in neuroscience. However, their proper
estimation in circuits with spiking neurons is not. Studying multisensory
integration by identifying multisensory RFs in cascade with biophysical
neuron models is as biologically plausible as it gets.
(B):
(i) We present deep mathematical results addressing the problem of
sensory integration at the level of individual neurons. The first major
contribution was to work out a spiking model that integrates sensory
stimuli in different spaces & dimensions. The second was to find
conditions for inverting a nonlinear operator mapping multiple information
streams into a single spike train. The third was to develop methods for
identifying multisensory circuits. (ii) Such problems have not been
rigorously studied before. Works cited by reviewer #2 investigated
multisensory integration in the context of psychophysical experiments, and
not spiking neural circuits (i.e., no neural correlates).
We hope
the rebuttal will clarify our approach/results and will motivate a further
discussion between reviewers.
------ Assigned_Reviewer_6
“…although the method proposed does not seem to be biologically
plausible form an algorithmic perspective...” --> (A) When it comes
to the decoding problem, by no means are we suggesting that a biological
system implements a decoder. Rather, decoding algorithms can be used by
researchers to (i) study neural processing and evaluate model performance
[2,3]; (ii) design brain machine interfaces [4,5]. (B) Identification
of neural circuits calls for finding parameters of phenomenological
circuit models. Thus the question of biological plausibility from an
algorithmic perspective simply does not arise in the identification
setting. We presented algorithms that (i) provably identify RFs based on
responses of spiking neuron models, including biophysical models, and (ii)
work with both synthetic and naturalistic stimuli.
-----
Assigned_Reviewer_7 “…the paper's most original contribution is the
extensions of TEMs to the MIMO setting.” -->The paper presents two
results: (i) a circuit for multisensory processing (and not simply for
multiple inputs and outputs) and (ii) identification methods for such
circuits. The originality is in showing that (a) the information about
individual sensory stimuli (e.g., audio and video) can be decoded from the
common pool of spikes. This is highly counterintuitive, given that spikes
and spike-trains are not labeled. After all, audio and video have
completely different dimensions and time scales; (b) the
identification problem for a single multisensory neuron is dual to
multisensory encoding with a population of neurons. Without this duality,
identification has been out of reach for systems/experimental
neuroscientists -- until now.
“I wonder why you did not choose a
real video+audio for the examples -- it would have strengthened the
connection to neuroscience.” -->Thank you for this suggestion. We
can provide a new figure and a 6-second-long natural video with audio, if
the paper is accepted.
“Theorem 1 needs to be
corrected/clarified.” --> We apologize for the confusion: part of
the theorem was accidentally omitted. The sufficient condition is to have
a large enough population of (different) neurons:
N>=SUM_m[(2L_1+1)(2L_2+1)…(2L_{n_m-1} + 1)]. The necessary condition is
that the total number of spikes is greater than
(2L_{n_m}+1)*SUM_m[(2L_1+1)(2L_2+1)…(2L_{n_m-1} + 1)] +N
“…what would happen if all filter kernels were the same? Then no
matter how many neurons you added, you would not gain any further
information.” --> That is not entirely correct. For example, if all
filters are Dirac-delta functions, the inputs are encoded directly without
processing. However, one can recover all inputs if the neurons have
different parameters (e.g., bias, capacitance, threshold of the IAF
neuron). Imposing linear independence between kernels is another way to
guarantee signal recovery.
----- Assigned_Reviewer_8
“…there is absolutely no connection to real biological systems,
despite the claimed source of inspiration” -->This assertion is
beyond astonishing since we provide systems neuroscientists with (i) a
detailed spiking neural circuit model for multisensory integration, (ii) a
decoding algorithm to faithfully recover multisensory stimuli and (iii) an
identification algorithm for multisensory systems. Identification of
multisensory systems has not been even remotely possible due to the lack
of a rigorous problem formulation. Our results are ahead of
experimentation and suggest very specific experiments to anyone working in
multisensory processing.
References: [1] DC Kadunce, JW
Vaughan, MT Wallace, BE Stein, 2001 [2] GB Stanley, FF Li, Y Dan, 1999
[3] MC-K Wu, SV David and JL Gallant, 2006 [4] BN Pasley et al,
2012 [5] TW Berger, VZ Marmarelis, SA Deadwyler, 2012
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