Abstract

Several canonical experimental paradigms (serial reaction task, mxn task, etc.) have been proposed to study the typical behavioural phenomenon in sequential key-press tasks. However, not much work has been done on studying motor sequencing in grid-navigation tasks. In this work, using empirical examinations, we systematically show grid-navigation task as an instance of skill learning paradigm. The participants performed Grid-Sailing Task (GST), which required navigating (by executing sequential key-presses) a 5x5 grid from start to goal position while using a particular key-mapping among the 3 cursor movement directions and the 3 keyboard buttons. We employ two different experiments to argue for the learning of cognitive strategies as well as motor sequences. By rejecting the motor adaptation argument and validating the law of practice, we characterize GST as a skill learning task. We further argue for advantages of GST as a general, canonical task over others for use in skill learning studies.

Abstract

Several canonical experimental paradigms (serial reaction task, mxn task, etc.) have been proposed to study the typical behavioural phenomena in a sequential motor key-press task. The repeated execution of visuomotor sequences in such paradigms lead to overall performance improvement such that the inter-response intervals in between certain sub-sequences decreases as compared to that across other sub-sequences. This efficient and hierarchical cluster organisation is called \textit{motor chunking}. We provide empirical evidence for motor chunking in grid-navigation sequencing tasks. The participants performed Grid-Sailing Task (GST) [Fermin et. al., 2010] that required navigating a 10x10 grid from start to goal position while using a particular key-mapping between the 3 cursor movement directions and the 3 keyboard buttons. This study confirms the emergence of subject-specific, unique temporal patterns related to chunking after substantial practice.

Abstract

Manual identification of ECG heart-beat classes by cardiologists is time consuming and cumbersome. These professionals rely on computer based methods for determination of these heart-disease types. In this work, existing literature is organized into a proposed taxonomy based on dichotomies involving full time series-based versus feature-based, AAMI versus Non-AAMI, and inter-patient versus intra-patient based distinctions. The basic contributions of this work are systematic review of literature on heart-beat abnormality detection, identifying research gaps and the research issues unmet sofar in the literature to propose novel approaches for addressing these gaps.

Abstract

It has long been understood that there is an interplay between affect and cognition((Kort & Reilly, 2003), but this interaction, based on the recent chess studies((Guntz, Crowley, Vaufreydaz, Balzarini, & Dessus, 2018), is much more intertwined than what the established theories postulate. To understand the underlying mechanisms in greater detail we propose an integrated model using Chrest and Nengo. We analyze the results based on simulations with data from previous empirical studies. Keywords: Affect, Cognition , Chess, Nengo , Chrest

Abstract

There have been numerous attempts in explaining the general learning behaviours using model-based and modelfree methods. While the model-based control is flexible yet computationally expensive in planning, the model-free control is quick but inflexible. The model-based control is therefore immune from reward devaluation and contingency degradation. Multiple arbitration schemes have been suggested to achieve the data efficiency and computational efficiency of modelbased and model-free control respectively. In this context, we propose a quantitative ’value of information’ based arbitration between both the controllers in order to establish a general computational framework for skill learning. The interacting model-based and model-free reinforcement learning processes are arbitrated using an uncertainty-based value of information. We further show that our algorithm performs better than Qlearning as well as Q-learning with experience replay

Abstract

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Abstract

Resting-state functional connectivity (FC) analyses have shown atypical connectivity in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as compared to typically developing (TD). However, this view emerges from investigating static FC overlooking the whole brain transient connectivity patterns. In our study, we investigated how age and disease influence the dynamic changes in functional connectivity of TD and ASD. We used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data stratified into three cohorts: children (7–11 years), adolescents (12–17 years), and adults (18+ years) for the analysis. The dynamic variability in the connection strength and the modular organization in terms of measures such as flexiblity, cohesion strength, and disjointness were explored for each subject to characterize the differences between ASD and TD. In ASD, we observed significantly higher inter-subject dynamic variability in connection strength as compared to TD. This hyper-variability relates to the symptom severity in ASD. We also found that whole-brain flexibility correlates with static modularity only in TD. Further, we observed a core-periphery organization in the resting-state, with Sensorimotor and Visual regions in the rigid core; and DMN and attention areas in the flexible periphery. TD also develops a more cohesive organization of sensorimotor areas. However, in ASD we found a strong positive correlation of symptom severity with flexibility of rigid areas and with disjointness of sensorimotor areas. The regions of the brain showing high predictive power of symptom severity were distributed across the cortex, with stronger bearings in the frontal, motor, and occipital cortices. Our study demonstrates that the dynamic framework best characterizes the variability in ASD.

Abstract

Learning a forward mapping that relates stimuli to the corresponding brain activation measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is termed as estimating encoding models. Computational tractability usually forces current encoding as well as decoding solutions to typically consider only a small subset of voxels from the actual 3D volume of activation. Further, while reconstructing stimulus information from brain activation (brain decoding) has received wider attention, there have been only a few attempts at constructing encoding solutions in the extant neuro-imaging literature. In this paper, we present StepEncog, a convolutional LSTM autoencoder model trained on fMRI voxels. The model can predict the entire brain volume rather than a small subset of voxels, as presented in earlier research works. We argue that the resulting solution avoids the problem of devising encoding models based on a rulebased selection of informative voxels and the concomitant issue of wide spatial variability of such voxels across participants. The perturbation experiments indicate that the proposed deep encoder indeed learns to predict brain activations with high spatial accuracy. On challenging universal decoder imaging datasets, our model yielded encouraging results.

Abstract

fMRI semantic category understanding using linguistic encoding models attempts to learn a forward mapping that relates stimuli to the corresponding brain activation. Stateof-the-art encoding models use a single global model (linear or non-linear) to predict brain activation (all the voxels) given the stimulus. However, the critical assumption in these methods is that a priori different brain regions respond the same way to all the stimuli, that is, there is no modularity or specialization assumed for any region. This goes against the modularity theory, supported by many cognitive neuroscience investigations suggesting that there are functionally specialized regions in the brain. In this paper we achieve this by clustering similar regions together and for every cluster we learn a different linear regression model using a mixture of linear experts model. The key idea here is that each linear expert captures the behaviour of similar brain regions. Given a new stimulus, the utility of the proposed model is twofold (i) predicts the brain activation as a weighted linear combination of the activations of multiple linear experts and (ii) to learn multiple experts corresponding to different brain regions. We argue that each expert captures activity patterns related to a particular region of interest (ROI) in the human brain. This study helps in understanding the brain regions that are activated together given different kinds of stimuli. Importantly, we suggest that the mixture of regression experts (MoRE) framework successfully combines the two principles of organization of function in the brain, namely that of specialization and integration. Experiments on fMRI data from paradigm 1 [1] where participants view linguistic stimuli show that the proposed MoRE model has better prediction accuracy compared to that of conventional models. Our model achieves a mean absolute error (MAE) of 3.94, with an R 2-score of 0.45 on this data set. This is an improvement over performance of traditional methods including, ridge regression (5.58 MAE, 0.15 R 2 -score), MLP (4.63 MAE, 0.35 R 2 -score). We also elaborate on the specializations captured by various experts in our mixture model and their implications.

Abstract

There have been numerous attempts in explaining the general learning behaviours by various cognitive models. Multiple hypotheses have been put further to qualitatively argue the best-fit model for motor skill acquisition task and its variations. In this context, for a discrete sequence production (DSP) task, one of the most insightful models is Verweys Dual Processor Model (DPM). It largely explains the learning and behavioural phenomenon of skilled discrete key-press sequences without providing any concrete computational basis of reinforcement. Therefore, we propose a quantitative explanation for Verweys DPM hypothesis by experimentally establishing a general computational framework for motor skill learning. We attempt combining the qualitative and quantitative theories based on a best-fit model of the experimental simulations of variations of dual processor models. The fundamental premise of sequential decision making for skill learning is based on interacting model-based (MB) and model-free (MF) reinforcement learning (RL) processes. Our unifying framework shows the proposed idea agrees well to Verweys DPM and Fitts three phases of skill learning. The accuracy of our model can further be validated by its statistical fit with the human-generated data on simple environment tasks like the grid-world. There have been numerous attempts in explaining the general learning behaviours by various cognitive models. Multiple hypotheses have been put further to qualitatively argue the best-fit model for motor skill acquisition task and its variations. In this context, for a discrete sequence production (DSP) task, one of the most insightful models is Verweys Dual Processor Model (DPM). It largely explains the learning and behavioural phenomenon of skilled discrete key-press sequences without providing any concrete computational basis of reinforcement. Therefore, we propose a quantitative explanation for Verweys DPM hypothesis by experimentally establishing a general computational framework for motor skill learning. We attempt combining the qualitative and quantitative theories based on a best-fit model of the experimental simulations of variations of dual processor models. The fundamental premise of sequential decision making for skill learning is based on interacting model-based (MB) and model-free (MF) reinforcement learning (RL) processes. Our unifying framework shows the proposed idea agrees well to Verweys DPM and Fitts three phases of skill learning. The accuracy of our model can further be validated by its statistical fit with the human-generated data on simple environment tasks like the grid-world.