The energy-efficient and brain-like information processing abilities of Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) have attracted considerable attention, establishing them as a crucial element of brain-inspired computing. One prevalent challenge encountered by SNNs is the trade-off between inference speed and accuracy, which requires sufficient time to achieve the desired level of performance. Drawing inspiration from animal behavior experiments that demonstrate a connection between decision-making reaction times, task complexity, and confidence levels, this study seeks to apply these insights to SNNs. The focus is on understanding how SNNs make inferences, with a particular emphasis on untangling the interplay between signal and noise in decision-making processes. The proposed theoretical framework introduces a new optimization objective for SNN training, highlighting the importance of not only the accuracy of decisions but also the development of predictive confidence through learning from past experiences. Experimental results demonstrate that SNNs trained according to this framework exhibit improved confidence expression, leading to better decision-making outcomes. In addition, a strategy is introduced for efficient decision-making during inference, which allows SNNs to complete tasks more quickly and can use stopping times as indicators of decision confidence. By integrating neuroscience insights with neuromorphic computing, this study opens up new possibilities to explore the capabilities of SNNs and advance their application in complex decision-making scenarios.
The aim of the present work is to design, analyze theoretically, and test numerically, a generalized Dryja-Smith-Widlund (GDSW) preconditioner for composite Discontinuous Galerkin discretizations of multicompartment parabolic reaction-diffusion equations, where the solution can exhibit natural discontinuities across the domain. We prove that the resulting preconditioned operator for the solution of the discrete system arising at each time step converges with a scalable and quasi-optimal upper bound for the condition number. The GDSW preconditioner is then applied to the EMI (Extracellular - Membrane - Intracellular) reaction-diffusion system, recently proposed to model microscopically the spatiotemporal evolution of cardiac bioelectrical potentials. Numerical tests validate the scalability and quasi-optimality of the EMI-GDSW preconditioner, and investigate its robustness with respect to the time step size as well as jumps in the diffusion coefficients.
Model evaluations are central to understanding the safety, risks, and societal impacts of AI systems. While most real-world AI applications involve human-AI interaction, most current evaluations (e.g., common benchmarks) of AI models do not. Instead, they incorporate human factors in limited ways, assessing the safety of models in isolation, thereby falling short of capturing the complexity of human-model interactions. In this paper, we discuss and operationalize a definition of an emerging category of evaluations -- "human interaction evaluations" (HIEs) -- which focus on the assessment of human-model interactions or the process and the outcomes of humans using models. First, we argue that HIEs can be used to increase the validity of safety evaluations, assess direct human impact and interaction-specific harms, and guide future assessments of models' societal impact. Second, we propose a safety-focused HIE design framework -- containing a human-LLM interaction taxonomy -- with three stages: (1) identifying the risk or harm area, (2) characterizing the use context, and (3) choosing the evaluation parameters. Third, we apply our framework to two potential evaluations for overreliance and persuasion risks. Finally, we conclude with tangible recommendations for addressing concerns over costs, replicability, and unrepresentativeness of HIEs.
Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs) offer an efficient and interpretable alternative to traditional multi-layer perceptron (MLP) architectures due to their finite network topology. However, according to the results of Kolmogorov and Vitushkin, the representation of generic smooth functions by KAN implementations using analytic functions constrained to a finite number of cutoff points cannot be exact. Hence, the convergence of KAN throughout the training process may be limited. This paper explores the relevance of smoothness in KANs, proposing that smooth, structurally informed KANs can achieve equivalence to MLPs in specific function classes. By leveraging inherent structural knowledge, KANs may reduce the data required for training and mitigate the risk of generating hallucinated predictions, thereby enhancing model reliability and performance in computational biomedicine.
Half-duplex communication complexity with adversary was defined in [Hoover, K., Impagliazzo, R., Mihajlin, I., Smal, A. V. Half-Duplex Communication Complexity, ISAAC 2018.] Half-duplex communication protocols generalize classical protocols defined by Andrew Yao in [Yao, A. C.-C. Some Complexity Questions Related to Distributive Computing (Preliminary Report), STOC 1979]. It has been unknown so far whether the communication complexities defined by these models are different or not. In the present paper we answer this question: we exhibit a function whose half-duplex communication complexity with adversary is strictly less than its classical communication complexity.
Many functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies rely on estimates of hierarchically organised brain networks whose segregation and integration reflect the dynamic transitions of latent cognitive states. However, most existing methods for estimating the community structure of networks from both individual and group-level analysis neglect the variability between subjects and lack validation. In this paper, we develop a new multilayer community detection method based on Bayesian latent block modelling. The method can robustly detect the group-level community structure of weighted functional networks that give rise to hidden brain states with an unknown number of communities and retain the variability of individual networks. For validation, we propose a new community structure-based multivariate Gaussian generative model to simulate synthetic signal. Our result shows that the inferred community memberships using hierarchical Bayesian analysis are consistent with the predefined node labels in the generative model. The method is also tested using real working memory task-fMRI data of 100 unrelated healthy subjects from the Human Connectome Project. The results show distinctive community structure patterns between 2-back, 0-back, and fixation conditions, which may reflect cognitive and behavioural states under working memory task conditions.
Randomized controlled trials often suffer from interference, a violation of the Stable Unit Treatment Values Assumption (SUTVA) in which a unit's treatment assignment affects the outcomes of its neighbors. This interference causes bias in naive estimators of the average treatment effect (ATE). A popular method to achieve unbiasedness is to pair the Horvitz-Thompson estimator of the ATE with a known exposure mapping: a function that identifies which units in a given randomization are not subject to interference. For example, an exposure mapping can specify that any unit with at least $h$-fraction of its neighbors having the same treatment status does not experience interference. However, this threshold $h$ is difficult to elicit from domain experts, and a misspecified threshold can induce bias. In this work, we propose a data-adaptive method to select the "$h$"-fraction threshold that minimizes the mean squared error of the Hortvitz-Thompson estimator. Our method estimates the bias and variance of the Horvitz-Thompson estimator under different thresholds using a linear dose-response model of the potential outcomes. We present simulations illustrating that our method improves upon non-adaptive choices of the threshold. We further illustrate the performance of our estimator by running experiments on a publicly-available Amazon product similarity graph. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our method is robust to deviations from the linear potential outcomes model.
Random probabilities are a key component to many nonparametric methods in Statistics and Machine Learning. To quantify comparisons between different laws of random probabilities several works are starting to use the elegant Wasserstein over Wasserstein distance. In this paper we prove that the infinite dimensionality of the space of probabilities drastically deteriorates its sample complexity, which is slower than any polynomial rate in the sample size. We propose a new distance that preserves many desirable properties of the former while achieving a parametric rate of convergence. In particular, our distance 1) metrizes weak convergence; 2) can be estimated numerically through samples with low complexity; 3) can be bounded analytically from above and below. The main ingredient are integral probability metrics, which lead to the name hierarchical IPM.
A high-order, degree-adaptive hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) method is presented for two-fluid incompressible Stokes flows, with boundaries and interfaces described using NURBS. The NURBS curves are embedded in a fixed Cartesian grid, yielding an unfitted HDG scheme capable of treating the exact geometry of the boundaries/interfaces, circumventing the need for fitted, high-order, curved meshes. The framework of the NURBS-enhanced finite element method (NEFEM) is employed for accurate quadrature along immersed NURBS and in elements cut by NURBS curves. A Nitsche's formulation is used to enforce Dirichlet conditions on embedded surfaces, yielding unknowns only on the mesh skeleton as in standard HDG, without introducing any additional degree of freedom on non-matching boundaries/interfaces. The resulting unfitted HDG-NEFEM method combines non-conforming meshes, exact NURBS geometry and high-order approximations to provide high-fidelity results on coarse meshes, independent of the geometric features of the domain. Numerical examples illustrate the optimal accuracy and robustness of the method, even in the presence of badly cut cells or faces, and its suitability to simulate microfluidic systems from CAD geometries.
Deep Neural Collapse (DNC) refers to the surprisingly rigid structure of the data representations in the final layers of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs). Though the phenomenon has been measured in a variety of settings, its emergence is typically explained via data-agnostic approaches, such as the unconstrained features model. In this work, we introduce a data-dependent setting where DNC forms due to feature learning through the average gradient outer product (AGOP). The AGOP is defined with respect to a learned predictor and is equal to the uncentered covariance matrix of its input-output gradients averaged over the training dataset. Deep Recursive Feature Machines are a method that constructs a neural network by iteratively mapping the data with the AGOP and applying an untrained random feature map. We demonstrate theoretically and empirically that DNC occurs in Deep Recursive Feature Machines as a consequence of the projection with the AGOP matrix computed at each layer. We then provide evidence that this mechanism holds for neural networks more generally. We show that the right singular vectors and values of the weights can be responsible for the majority of within-class variability collapse for DNNs trained in the feature learning regime. As observed in recent work, this singular structure is highly correlated with that of the AGOP.
Recent advances in 3D fully convolutional networks (FCN) have made it feasible to produce dense voxel-wise predictions of volumetric images. In this work, we show that a multi-class 3D FCN trained on manually labeled CT scans of several anatomical structures (ranging from the large organs to thin vessels) can achieve competitive segmentation results, while avoiding the need for handcrafting features or training class-specific models. To this end, we propose a two-stage, coarse-to-fine approach that will first use a 3D FCN to roughly define a candidate region, which will then be used as input to a second 3D FCN. This reduces the number of voxels the second FCN has to classify to ~10% and allows it to focus on more detailed segmentation of the organs and vessels. We utilize training and validation sets consisting of 331 clinical CT images and test our models on a completely unseen data collection acquired at a different hospital that includes 150 CT scans, targeting three anatomical organs (liver, spleen, and pancreas). In challenging organs such as the pancreas, our cascaded approach improves the mean Dice score from 68.5 to 82.2%, achieving the highest reported average score on this dataset. We compare with a 2D FCN method on a separate dataset of 240 CT scans with 18 classes and achieve a significantly higher performance in small organs and vessels. Furthermore, we explore fine-tuning our models to different datasets. Our experiments illustrate the promise and robustness of current 3D FCN based semantic segmentation of medical images, achieving state-of-the-art results. Our code and trained models are available for download: //github.com/holgerroth/3Dunet_abdomen_cascade.