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A major goal in neuroscience is to understand the relationship between an animal’s behavior and how this is encoded in the brain. Therefore, a typical experiment involves training an animal to perform a task and recording the activity of its neurons – brain cells – while the animal carries out the task. To complement these experimental results, researchers “train” artificial neural networks – simplified mathematical models of the brain that consist of simple neuron-like units – to simulate the same tasks on a computer. Unlike real brains, artificial neural networks provide complete access to the “neural circuits” responsible for a behavior, offering a way to study and manipulate the behavior in the circuit. One open issue about this approach has been the way in which the artificial networks are trained. In a process known as reinforcement learning, animals learn from rewards (such as juice) that they receive when they choose actions that lead to the successful completion of a task. By contrast, the artificial networks are explicitly told the correct action. In addition to differing from how animals learn, this limits the types of behavior that can be studied using artificial neural networks. Recent advances in the field of machine learning that combine reinforcement learning with artificial neural networks have now allowed Song et al. to train artificial networks to perform tasks in a way that mimics the way that animals learn. The networks consisted of two parts: a “decision network” that uses sensory information to select actions that lead to the greatest reward, and a “value network” that predicts how rewarding an action will be. Song et al. found that the resulting artificial “brain activity” closely resembled the activity found in the brains of animals, confirming that this method of training artificial neural networks may be a useful tool for neuroscientists who study the relationship between brains and behavior. The training method explored by Song et al. represents only one step forward in developing artificial neural networks that resemble the real brain. In particular, neural networks modify connections between units in a vastly different way to the methods used by biological brains to alter the connections between neurons. Future work will be needed to bridge this gap.
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Fast deep neural correspondence for tracking and identifying neurons in C. elegans using semi-synthetic training
Understanding the intricacies of the brain often requires spotting and tracking specific neurons over time and across different individuals. For instance, scientists may need to precisely monitor the activity of one neuron even as the brain moves and deforms; or they may want to find universal patterns by comparing signals from the same neuron across different individuals. Both tasks require matching which neuron is which in different images and amongst a constellation of cells. This is theoretically possible in certain ‘model’ animals where every single neuron is known and carefully mapped out. Still, it remains challenging: neurons move relative to one another as the animal changes posture, and the position of a cell is also slightly different between individuals. Sophisticated computer algorithms are increasingly used to tackle this problem, but they are far too slow to track neural signals as real-time experiments unfold. To address this issue, Yu et al. designed a new algorithm based on the Transformer, an artificial neural network originally used to spot relationships between words in sentences. To learn relationships between neurons, the algorithm was fed hundreds of thousands of ‘semi-synthetic’ examples of constellations of neurons. Instead of painfully collated actual experimental data, these datasets were created by a simulator based on a few simple measurements. Testing the new algorithm on the tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans revealed that it was faster and more accurate, finding corresponding neurons in about 10ms. The work by Yu et al. demonstrates the power of using simulations rather than experimental data to train artificial networks. The resulting algorithm can be used immediately to help study how the brain of C. elegans makes decisions or controls movements. Ultimately, this research could allow brain-machine interfaces to be developed.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1845137
- PAR ID:
- 10317769
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- eLife
- Volume:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 2050-084X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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INTRODUCTION A brainwide, synaptic-resolution connectivity map—a connectome—is essential for understanding how the brain generates behavior. However because of technological constraints imaging entire brains with electron microscopy (EM) and reconstructing circuits from such datasets has been challenging. To date, complete connectomes have been mapped for only three organisms, each with several hundred brain neurons: the nematode C. elegans , the larva of the sea squirt Ciona intestinalis , and of the marine annelid Platynereis dumerilii . Synapse-resolution circuit diagrams of larger brains, such as insects, fish, and mammals, have been approached by considering select subregions in isolation. However, neural computations span spatially dispersed but interconnected brain regions, and understanding any one computation requires the complete brain connectome with all its inputs and outputs. 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The approach and computational tools generated in this study will facilitate the analysis of future connectomes. Although the details of brain organization differ across the animal kingdom, many circuit architectures are conserved. As more brain connectomes of other organisms are mapped in the future, comparisons between them will reveal both common and therefore potentially optimal circuit architectures, as well as the idiosyncratic ones that underlie behavioral differences between organisms. Some of the architectural features observed in the Drosophila larval brain, including multilayer shortcuts and prominent nested recurrent loops, are found in state-of-the-art artificial neural networks, where they can compensate for a lack of network depth and support arbitrary, task-dependent computations. Such features could therefore increase the brain’s computational capacity, overcoming physiological constraints on the number of neurons. 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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.66410
