Cortical oscillations support sampling-based computations in spiking neural networks

PLoS Computational Biology, vol. 18, pp. e1009753

Abstract

Being permanently confronted with an uncertain world, brains have faced evolutionary pressure to represent this uncertainty in order to respond appropriately. Often, this requires visiting multiple interpretations of the available information or multiple solutions to an encountered problem. This gives rise to the so-called mixing problem: since all of these "valid" states represent powerful attractors, but between themselves can be very dissimilar, switching between such states can be difficult. We propose that cortical oscillations can be effectively used to overcome this challenge. By acting as an effective temperature, background spiking activity modulates exploration. Rhythmic changes induced by cortical oscillations can then be interpreted as a form of simulated tempering. We provide a rigorous mathematical discussion of this link and study some of its phenomenological implications in computer simulations. This identifies a new computational role of cortical oscillations and connects them to various phenomena in the brain, such as sampling-based probabilistic inference, memory replay, multisensory cue combination, and place cell flickering.

Authors 10

1. Agnes Korcsak-Gorzo corresponding Aachen

   Forschungszentrum Jülich · Heidelberg University · Jülich Aachen Research Alliance · RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany

   Kirchhoff-Institute for Physics, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

   RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

2. Michael G. Müller corresponding

   Graz University of Technology

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Theoretical Computer Science, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

3. Andreas Baumbach

   University of Bern · Heidelberg University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Physiology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

   Kirchhoff-Institute for Physics, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

4. Luziwei Leng

   Heidelberg University

   Affiliation as printed

   Kirchhoff-Institute for Physics, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

5. Oliver Breitwieser

   Heidelberg University

   Affiliation as printed

   Kirchhoff-Institute for Physics, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

6. Sacha Jennifer van Albada

   Forschungszentrum Jülich · University of Cologne · Jülich Aachen Research Alliance

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany

   Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

7. Walter Senn

   University of Bern

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Physiology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

8. Karlheinz Meier

   Heidelberg University

   Affiliation as printed

   Kirchhoff-Institute for Physics, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

9. Robert A. Legenstein

   Graz University of Technology

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Theoretical Computer Science, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

10. Mihai Alexandru Petrovici corresponding

    University of Bern · Heidelberg University

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Physiology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Kirchhoff-Institute for Physics, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany