Product : comic!

• Accessible
• Engaging
• Illustrative, includes pictures
• Guides readers through an explanation like a story

Communicative project!

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Why Neural Manifolds?

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• Fascinated by the idea of population geometry
• Nice bundle of many topics we’ve covered
• What are other ways to represent neural activity – interpretability.

More interpretability, better accessible content, more understanding

Originally wanted to do a sculpture…

Or a musical project

Overall, the idea that activity can be captured by neural activity is very satisfying to me.

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Key Topics Explained:

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• Computer brain metaphor
• How neurons work
• Population activity, neurons in networks
• Data collection methods
• Neurons and dimensionality
• Manifolds: low dimensional simplifications of higher dimensional space
• Dimensionality reduction methods: PCA
• Neural manifolds: manifolds applied in neural space
• Analogy in evolutionary biology
• The case for low-dimensionality: function and constraint
• Low dimensionality and robustness to noise
• The case for high dimensionality: capturing enough details.
• Summary: manifolds are useful tools for interpreting high-dimensional data

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NEURONS!

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Dimensionality

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• The idea that data lives in n-dimensional space, neuron example and map analogy
• Dimensions more than 3 are hard to conceptualize

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PCA

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Introduction to Manifolds

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• “A manifold is a space that looks flat or straight when you zoom in on it, but is curved or complex when you zoom out”.

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NEURAL Manifolds

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Evolutionary Biology Analogy

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• Environmental Impact: “The brain only visits a small fraction of all potential states”, similar to organism that exist.

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Sources

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• Article by Joram Keijser

Casual language, helpful analogies

Discusses limitations and advantages of neural manifolds

• (Bondanelli et al. 2021)

Low dimensional manifolds in the auditory cortex –

Population activity rotates in a low dimensional space

• A neural manifold view of the brain

Manifolds are biological objects. Low dimensional structure emerges from constraints and connectivity.

• Class Transmitter article on neural manifolds

Neural manifolds: Latest buzzword or pathway to understand the brain? | The Transmitter: Neuroscience News and Perspectives

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– Neural manifolds: more than the sum of their neurons

Population geometry, are they fundamental or just descriptive models?

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Big question in the field:

Are neural manifolds real? Or just analysis artifacts, artifacts of the constraints of simple lab tasks?

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…both.

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Thank You!