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6 Publications

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    12/07/15 | Sample complexity of learning Mahalanobis distance metrics.
    Verma N, Branson KM
    Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. 2015-Jul ;28:

    Metric learning seeks a transformation of the feature space that enhances prediction quality for a given task. In this work we provide PAC-style sample complexity rates for supervised metric learning. We give matching lower- and upper-bounds showing that sample complexity scales with the representation dimension when no assumptions are made about the underlying data distribution. In addition, by leveraging the structure of the data distribution, we provide rates fine-tuned to a specific notion of the intrinsic complexity of a given dataset, allowing us to relax the dependence on representation dimension. We show both theoretically and empirically that augmenting the metric learning optimization criterion with a simple norm-based regularization is important and can help adapt to a dataset’s intrinsic complexity yielding better generalization, thus partly explaining the empirical success of similar regularizations reported in previous works.

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    12/03/15 | Cortex commands the performance of skilled movement.
    Guo J, Graves AR, Guo WW, Zheng J, Lee A, Rodríguez-González J, Li N, Macklin JJ, Phillips JW, Mensh BD, Branson K, Hantman AW
    eLife. 2015 Dec 3;4:. doi: 10.7554/eLife.10774

    Mammalian cerebral cortex is accepted as being critical for voluntary motor control, but what functions depend on cortex is still unclear. Here we used rapid, reversible optogenetic inhibition to test the role of cortex during a head-fixed task in which mice reach, grab, and eat a food pellet. Sudden cortical inhibition blocked initiation or froze execution of this skilled prehension behavior, but left untrained forelimb movements unaffected. Unexpectedly, kinematically normal prehension occurred immediately after cortical inhibition even during rest periods lacking cue and pellet. This 'rebound' prehension was only evoked in trained and food-deprived animals, suggesting that a motivation-gated motor engram sufficient to evoke prehension is activated at inhibition's end. These results demonstrate the necessity and sufficiency of cortical activity for enacting a learned skill.

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    Branson LabFreeman Lab
    10/22/15 | Imaging the neural basis of locomotion.
    Branson K, Freeman J
    Cell. 2015 Oct 22;163(3):541-2. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2015.10.014

    To investigate the fundamental question of how nervous systems encode, organize, and sequence behaviors, Kato et al. imaged neural activity with cellular resolution across the brain of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans. Locomotion behavior seems to be continuously represented by cyclical patterns of distributed neural activity that are present even in immobilized animals.

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    08/11/15 | Whole-central nervous system functional imaging in larval Drosophila.
    Lemon WC, Pulver SR, Höckendorf B, McDole K, Branson KM, Freeman J, Keller PJ
    Nature Communications. 2015 Aug 11;6:7924. doi: 10.1038/ncomms8924

    Understanding how the brain works in tight concert with the rest of the central nervous system (CNS) hinges upon knowledge of coordinated activity patterns across the whole CNS. We present a method for measuring activity in an entire, non-transparent CNS with high spatiotemporal resolution. We combine a light-sheet microscope capable of simultaneous multi-view imaging at volumetric speeds 25-fold faster than the state-of-the-art, a whole-CNS imaging assay for the isolated Drosophila larval CNS and a computational framework for analysing multi-view, whole-CNS calcium imaging data. We image both brain and ventral nerve cord, covering the entire CNS at 2 or 5 Hz with two- or one-photon excitation, respectively. By mapping network activity during fictive behaviours and quantitatively comparing high-resolution whole-CNS activity maps across individuals, we predict functional connections between CNS regions and reveal neurons in the brain that identify type and temporal state of motor programs executed in the ventral nerve cord.

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    06/08/15 | Understanding classifier errors by examining influential neighbors.
    Mayank Kabra , Alice A. Robie , Kristin Branson
    IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. 06/2015:

    Modern supervised learning algorithms can learn very accurate and complex discriminating functions. But when these classifiers fail, this complexity can also be a drawback because there is no easy, intuitive way to diagnose why they are failing and remedy the problem. This important question has received little attention. To address this problem, we propose a novel method to analyze and understand a classifier's errors. Our method centers around a measure of how much influence a training example has on the classifier's prediction for a test example. To understand why a classifier is mispredicting the label of a given test example, the user can find and review the most influential training examples that caused this misprediction, allowing them to focus their attention on relevant areas of the data space. This will aid the user in determining if and how the training data is inconsistently labeled or lacking in diversity, or if the feature representation is insufficient. As computing the influence of each training example is computationally impractical, we propose a novel distance metric to approximate influence for boosting classifiers that is fast enough to be used interactively. We also show several novel use paradigms of our distance metric. Through experiments, we show that it can be used to find incorrectly or inconsistently labeled training examples, to find specific areas of the data space that need more training data, and to gain insight into which features are missing from the current representation. 

    Code is available at https://github.com/kristinbranson/InfluentialNeighbors.

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    Zlatic LabFetter LabBranson LabSimpson LabTruman LabCardona Lab
    04/20/15 | A multilevel multimodal circuit enhances action selection in Drosophila.
    Ohyama T, Schneider-Mizell CM, Fetter RD, Aleman JV, Franconville R, Rivera-Alba M, Mensh BD, Branson KM, Simpson JH, Truman JW, Cardona A, Zlatic M
    Nature. 2015 Apr 20;520(7549):633-9. doi: 10.1038/nature14297

    Natural events present multiple types of sensory cues, each detected by a specialized sensory modality. Combining information from several modalities is essential for the selection of appropriate actions. Key to understanding multimodal computations is determining the structural patterns of multimodal convergence and how these patterns contribute to behaviour. Modalities could converge early, late or at multiple levels in the sensory processing hierarchy. Here we show that combining mechanosensory and nociceptive cues synergistically enhances the selection of the fastest mode of escape locomotion in Drosophila larvae. In an electron microscopy volume that spans the entire insect nervous system, we reconstructed the multisensory circuit supporting the synergy, spanning multiple levels of the sensory processing hierarchy. The wiring diagram revealed a complex multilevel multimodal convergence architecture. Using behavioural and physiological studies, we identified functionally connected circuit nodes that trigger the fastest locomotor mode, and others that facilitate it, and we provide evidence that multiple levels of multimodal integration contribute to escape mode selection. We propose that the multilevel multimodal convergence architecture may be a general feature of multisensory circuits enabling complex input–output functions and selective tuning to ecologically relevant combinations of cues.

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