Abstract
The ultimate product of an electrophysiology experiment is often a decision on which biological hypothesis or model best explains the observed data. We outline a paradigm designed for comparison of different models, which we refer to as spike train prediction. A key ingredient of this paradigm is a prediction quality valuation that estimates how close a predicted conditional intensity function is to an actual observed spike train. Although a valuation based on log likelihood (L) is most natural, it has various complications in this context. We propose that a quadratic valuation (Q) can be used as an alternative to L. Q shares some important theoretical properties with L, including consistency, and the two valuations perform similarly on simulated and experimental data. Moreover, Q is more robust than L, and optimization with Q can dramatically improve computational efficiency. We illustrate the utility of Q for comparing models of peer prediction, where it can be computed directly from cross-correlograms. Although Q does not have a straightforward probabilistic interpretation, Q is essentially given by Euclidean distance.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 644-667 |
Number of pages | 24 |
Journal | Neural computation |
Volume | 20 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 2008 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
- Cognitive Neuroscience