2016 Theses Doctoral

New perspectives on learning, inference, and control in brains and machines

Merel, Joshua Scott

The work presented in this thesis provides new perspectives and approaches for problems that arise in the analysis of neural data. Particular emphasis is placed on parameter fitting and automated analysis problems that would arise naturally in closed-loop experiments. Part one focuses on two brain-computer interface problems. First, we provide a framework for understanding co-adaptation, the setting in which decoder updating and user learning occur simultaneously. We also provide a new perspective on intention-based parameter fitting and tools to extend this approach to higher dimensional decoders. Part two focuses on event inference, which refers to the decomposition of observed timeseries data into interpretable events. We present application of event inference methods on voltage-clamp recordings as well as calcium imaging, and describe extensions to allow for combining data across modalities or trials.