Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Feb 12;21(1):7.
doi: 10.1186/s12868-020-0555-z.

Identifying the pulsed neuron networks' structures by a nonlinear Granger causality method

Affiliations

Identifying the pulsed neuron networks' structures by a nonlinear Granger causality method

Mei-Jia Zhu et al. BMC Neurosci. .

Abstract

Background: It is a crucial task of brain science researches to explore functional connective maps of Biological Neural Networks (BNN). The maps help to deeply study the dominant relationship between the structures of the BNNs and their network functions.

Results: In this study, the ideas of linear Granger causality modeling and causality identification are extended to those of nonlinear Granger causality modeling and network structure identification. We employed Radial Basis Functions to fit the nonlinear multivariate dynamical responses of BNNs with neuronal pulse firing. By introducing the contributions from presynaptic neurons and detecting whether the predictions for postsynaptic neurons' pulse firing signals are improved or not, we can reveal the information flows distribution of BNNs. Thus, the functional connections from presynaptic neurons can be identified from the obtained network information flows. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, the Nonlinear Granger Causality Identification Method (NGCIM) is applied to the network structure discovery processes of Spiking Neural Networks (SNN). SNN is a simulation model based on an Integrate-and-Fire mechanism. By network simulations, the multi-channel neuronal pulse sequence data of the SNNs can be used to reversely identify the synaptic connections and strengths of the SNNs.

Conclusions: The identification results show: for 2-6 nodes small-scale neural networks, 20 nodes medium-scale neural networks, and 100 nodes large-scale neural networks, the identification accuracy of NGCIM with the Gaussian kernel function was 100%, 99.64%, 98.64%, 98.37%, 98.31%, 84.87% and 80.56%, respectively. The identification accuracies were significantly higher than those of a traditional Linear Granger Causality Identification Method with the same network sizes. Thus, with an accumulation of the data obtained by the existing measurement methods, such as Electroencephalography, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and Multi-Electrode Array, the NGCIM can be a promising network modeling method to infer the functional connective maps of BNNs.

Keywords: Integrate-and-fire model; Network structure identification; Nonlinear granger causality; Radial basis function.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
A 6-mode SNN simulation (a) 6-node SNN’s structure (b) multivariate response data generated by the network simulation (after sampling the pulse sequences of the neurons)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Identification results of 6 node network structure by the LGCIM and the NGCIM. a The network connection structure identified by the NGCIM with the Gaussian kernel function. b The network connection structure identified by the LGCIM
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
A structure of an RBF network
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
A schematic drawing of the RBF learning process
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Schematic drawing of conditional causality. For the Granger causalities analysis from y to x, there is a direct causality and an indirect causality via z. All direct connections are denoted by solid lines, and indirect connections are represented by dash lines

Similar articles

References

    1. Gurkovskiy BV, Zhuravlev BV, Onishchenko EM, Simakov AB, Trifonova NY, Voronov YA. Techniques and instrumental complex for research of influence of microwaves encoded by brain neural signals on biological objects’ psycho physiological state. IOP Conf Ser Mater Sci Eng. 2016;151:012019. doi: 10.1088/1757-899X/151/1/012019. - DOI
    1. Liu MG, Chen XF, He T, Li Z, Chen J. Use of multi-electrode array recordings in studies of network synaptic plasticity in both time and space. Neurosci Bull. 2012;28(4):409–422. doi: 10.1007/s12264-012-1251-5. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Koch-Janusz M, Ringel Z. Mutual information, neural networks and the renormalization group. Nat Phys. 2017;14:578–582. doi: 10.1038/s41567-018-0081-4. - DOI
    1. Babiloni C, Ferri R, Binetti G, Vecchio F, Rossini PM. Directionality of EEG synchronization in Alzheimer's disease subjects. Neurobiol Aging. 2007;30(1):93–102. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2007.05.007. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Zou C, Feng J. Granger causality vs dynamic Bayesian network inference: a comparative study. BMC Bioinform. 2009;10(1):122. doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-10-122. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources