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Neural fingerprinting is a method to identify individuals from a group of people. Here, we established a new connectome-based identification model and used diffusion maps to show that biological parent–child couples share functional connectivity patterns while listening to stories. These shared fingerprints enabled the identification of children and their biological parents from a group of parents and children. Functional patterns were evident in both cognitive and sensory brain networks. Defining "typical" shared biological parent–child brain patterns may enable predicting or even preventing impaired parent–child connections that develop due to genetic or environmental causes. Finally, we argue that the proposed framework opens new opportunities to link similarities in connectivity patterns to behavioral, psychological, and medical phenomena among other populations. To our knowledge, this is the first study to reveal the neural fingerprint that represents distinct biological parent–child couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) is a leading tool for equation-free analysis of high-dimensional dynamical systems from observations. In this work, we focus on a combination of DMD and delay-coordinates embedding, which is termed delay-coordinates DMD and is based on augmenting observations from current and past time steps, accommodating the analysis of a broad family of observations. An important utility of DMD is the compact and reduced-order spectral representation of observations in terms of the DMD eigenvalues and modes, where the temporal information is separated from the spatial information. From a spatiotemporal viewpoint, we show that when DMD is applied to delay-coordinates embedding, temporal information is intertwined with spatial information, inducing a particular spectral structure on the DMD components. We formulate and analyze this structure, which we term the spatiotemporal coupling in delay-coordinates DMD. Based on this spatiotemporal coupling, we propose a new method for DMD components selection. When using delay-coordinates DMD that comprises redundant modes, this selection is an essential step for obtaining a compact and reduced-order representation of the observations. We demonstrate our method on noisy simulated signals and various dynamical systems and show superior component selection compared to a commonly used method that relies on the amplitudes of the modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by establishing theoretical foundations for various manifold learning algorithms, we study the problem of Mahalanobis distance (MD) and the associated precision matrix estimation from high-dimensional noisy data. By relying on recent transformative results in covariance matrix estimation, we demonstrate the sensitivity of MD and the associated precision matrix to measurement noise, determining the exact asymptotic signal-to-noise ratio at which MD fails, and quantifying its performance otherwise. In addition, for an appropriate loss function, we propose an asymptotically optimal shrinker, which is shown to be beneficial over the classical implementation of the MD, both analytically and in simulations. The result is extended to the manifold setup, where the nonlinear interaction between curvature and high-dimensional noise is taken care of. The developed solution is applied to study a multi-scale reduction problem in the dynamical system analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We address a three-tier numerical framework based on nonlinear manifold learning for the forecasting of high-dimensional time series, relaxing the "curse of dimensionality" related to the training phase of surrogate/machine learning models. At the first step, we embed the high-dimensional time series into a reduced low-dimensional space using nonlinear manifold learning (local linear embedding and parsimonious diffusion maps). Then, we construct reduced-order surrogate models on the manifold (here, for our illustrations, we used multivariate autoregressive and Gaussian process regression models) to forecast the embedded dynamics. Finally, we solve the pre-image problem, thus lifting the embedded time series back to the original high-dimensional space using radial basis function interpolation and geometric harmonics. The proposed numerical data-driven scheme can also be applied as a reduced-order model procedure for the numerical solution/propagation of the (transient) dynamics of partial differential equations (PDEs). We assess the performance of the proposed scheme via three different families of problems: (a) the forecasting of synthetic time series generated by three simplistic linear and weakly nonlinear stochastic models resembling electroencephalography signals, (b) the prediction/propagation of the solution profiles of a linear parabolic PDE and the Brusselator model (a set of two nonlinear parabolic PDEs), and (c) the forecasting of a real-world data set containing daily time series of ten key foreign exchange rates spanning the time period 3 September 2001–29 October 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The jerky motion of twin boundaries in the ferromagnetic shape memory alloy Ni‐Mn‐Ga is studied by simultaneous measurements of stress and magnetic emissions (ME). A careful design of the experimental conditions results in an approximately linear relationship between the measured ME voltage and the nm‐scale volumes exhibiting twinning transformation during microsecond‐scale abrupt "avalanche" events. This study shows that the same distributions of ME avalanches, related to features of jerky twin boundary motion, are found both during and between stress drop events. Maximum likelihood analysis of statistical distributions of several variables reveals a good fit to power laws truncated by exponential functions. Interestingly, the characteristic cutoffs described by the exponential functions are in the middle of the distribution range. Further, the cutoff values can be related to the physical characteristics of the studied problem. Particularly, the cutoff of amplitudes of ME avalanches matches the value predicted by high rate magnetic pulse tests performed under much larger driving force values. This observation implies that avalanches during slow rate twin boundary motion and velocity changes observed by high rate tests represent the same behavior and can be described by the same theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A low-dimensional dynamical system is observed in an experiment as a high-dimensional signal, for example, a video of a chaotic pendulums system. Assuming that we know the dynamical model up to some unknown parameters, can we estimate the underlying system's parameters by measuring its time-evolution only once? The key information for performing this estimation lies in the temporal inter-dependencies between the signal and the model. We propose a kernel-based score to compare these dependencies. Our score generalizes a maximum likelihood estimator for a linear model to a general nonlinear setting in an unknown feature space. We estimate the system's underlying parameters by maximizing the proposed score. We demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the method using two chaotic dynamical systems—the double pendulum and the Lorenz '63 model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imaging Mass Cytometry (IMC) combines laser ablation and mass spectrometry to quantitate metal-conjugated primary antibodies incubated in intact tumor tissue slides. This strategy allows spatially-resolved multiplexing of dozens of simultaneous protein targets with 1μm resolution. Each slide is a spatial assay consisting of high-dimensional multivariate observations (m-dimensional feature space) collected at different spatial positions and capturing data from a single biological sample or even representative spots from multiple samples when using tissue microarrays. Often, each of these spatial assays could be characterized by several regions of interest (ROIs). To extract meaningful information from the multi-dimensional observations recorded at different ROIs across different assays, we propose to analyze such datasets using a two-step graph-based approach. We first construct for each ROI a graph representing the interactions between the m covariates and compute an m dimensional vector characterizing the steady state distribution among features. We then use all these m-dimensional vectors to construct a graph between the ROIs from all assays. This second graph is subjected to a nonlinear dimension reduction analysis, retrieving the intrinsic geometric representation of the ROIs. Such a representation provides the foundation for efficient and accurate organization of the different ROIs that correlates with their phenotypes. Theoretically, we show that when the ROIs have a particular bi-modal distribution, the new representation gives rise to a better distinction between the two modalities compared to the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimator. We applied our method to predict the sensitivity to PD-1 axis blockers treatment of lung cancer subjects based on IMC data, achieving 97.3% average accuracy on two IMC datasets. This serves as empirical evidence that the graph of graphs approach enables us to integrate multiple ROIs and the intra-relationships between the features at each ROI, giving rise to an informative representation that is strongly associated with the phenotypic state of the entire image. Author summary: We propose a two-step graph-based analyses for high-dimensional multiplexed datasets characterizing ROIs and their inter-relationships. The first step consists of extracting the steady state distribution of the random walk on the graph, which captures the mutual relations between the covariates of each ROI. The second step employs a nonlinear dimensionality reduction on the steady state distributions to construct a map that unravels the intrinsic geometric structure of the ROIs. We theoretically show that when the ROIs have a two-class structure, our method accentuates the distinction between the classes. Particularly, in a setting with Gaussian distribution it outperforms the MAP estimator, implying that the mutual relations between the covariates within the ROIs and spatial coordinates are well captured by the steady state distributions. We apply our method to imaging mass cytometry (IMC). Our analysis provides a representation that facilitates prediction of the sensitivity to PD-1 axis blockers treatment of lung cancer subjects. Particularly, our approach achieves state of the art results with average accuracy of 97.3% on two IMC datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finding informative low-dimensional descriptions of high-dimensional simulation data (like the ones arising in molecular dynamics or kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of physical and chemical processes) is crucial to understanding physical phenomena, and can also dramatically assist in accelerating the simulations themselves. In this paper, we discuss and illustrate the use of nonlinear intrinsic variables (NIV) in the mining of high-dimensional multiscale simulation data. In particular, we focus on the way NIV allows us to functionally merge different simulation ensembles, and different partial observations of these ensembles, as well as to infer variables not explicitly measured. The approach relies on certain simple features of the underlying process variability to filter out measurement noise and systematically recover a unique reference coordinate frame. We illustrate the approach through two distinct sets of atomistic simulations: a stochastic simulation of an enzyme reaction network exhibiting both fast and slow time scales, and a molecular dynamics simulation of alanine dipeptide in explicit water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-dimensional signals generated by dynamical systems arise in many fields of science. For example, many biomedical signals can be modeled by a few latent physiologically related variables measured indirectly through a large set of noisy sensors. In such applications, a notable challenge in analyzing and processing the observed data is that the generating system is typically unknown. In this chapter, this problem is addressed through geometric analysis by applying manifold learning. Specifically, we show how using manifold learning in a purely data-driven manner, with minimal prior knowledge or model assumptions, we can both discover the hidden state, dynamics, and observation function, and also attain a compact linear description of the full system. The main assumption is that the accessible highdimensional data (the observations of the system) lie on an underlying nonlinear manifold of lower dimensions. Furthermore, when applying manifold learning to time series, critical information is typically overlooked. Time series are processed as data sets of samples, ignoring their embodied dynamics and temporal order. We address the challenge of incorporating the time dependencies into manifold learning and present a purely data-driven scheme. First, an intrinsic representation is derived without prior knowledge of the system by applying diffusionmaps. Second, we show that even for highly nonlinear systems, the dynamics of the constructed representation is approximately linear, and present accordingly two filtering frameworks, one based on a linear observer and another based on the Kalman filter. These filtering methods enable us to directly incorporate the inherent dynamics and time dependencies between consecutive system observations into the diffusion maps coordinates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech enhancement is a core problem in audio signal processing with commercial applications in devices as diverse as mobile phones, conference call systems, smart assistants, and hearing aids. An essential component in the design of speech enhancement algorithms is acoustic source localization. Speaker localization is also directly applicable to many other audio related tasks, e.g., automated camera steering, teleconferencing systems, and robot audition. From a signal processing perspective, speaker localization is the task of mapping multichannel speech signals to 3-D source coordinates. To obtain viable solutions for this mapping, an accurate description of the source wave propagation captured by the respective acoustic channel is required. In fact, the acoustic channels can be considered as the spatialfingerprints characterizing the positions of each of the sources in a reverberant enclosure. These fingerprints represent complex reflection patterns stemming from the surfaces and objects characterizing the enclosure. Hence, they are usually modelled by a very large number of coefficients, resulting in an intricate high-dimensional representation. We claim that in static acoustic environments, despite the high dimensional representation, the difference between acoustic channels can be attributed mainly to changes in the source position. Thus, the true intrinsic dimensionality of the variations of the acoustic channels are significantly smaller than the number of variables commonly used to represent them; that is, the acoustic channels pertain to a low-dimensional manifold that can be inferred from data using nonlinear dimensionality reduction techniques. A comprehensive experimental study carried out in a real-life acoustic environment demonstrates the validity of the proposed manifold-based paradigm. Motivated by this result, several high-performance localization and tracking methods were developed by harnessing novel mathematical tools for learning over manifolds, including diffusion maps, semi-supervised learning, optimization in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces and Gaussian process inference. We present two localization algorithms that were designed for a single microphone array of two microphones. These algorithms were extended to several distributed arrays by merging the information of the different manifolds associated with each array. Tracking a moving source was also addressed by a data-driven propagation model relating movements on the abstract manifold to the actual source displacements. This data-driven propagation model was combined with a classical localization approach, in a hybrid algorithm that ties together the two worlds of classical and data-driven localization, while gaining the benefits of both. We show that the proposed algorithms outperform state-of-the-art localization methods, and obtain high accuracy in challenging noisy and reverberant environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate the network dynamics mechanisms underlying differential initiation of epileptic interictal spikes and seizures.Methods: We performed combined in vivo 2-photon calcium imaging from different targeted neuronal subpopulations and extracellular electrophysiological recordings during 4-aminopyridine-induced neocortical spikes and seizures.Results: Both spikes and seizures were associated with intense synchronized activation of excitatory layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons (PNs) and to a lesser degree layer 4 neurons, as well as inhibitory parvalbumin-expressing interneurons (INs). In sharp contrast, layer 5 PNs and somatostatin-expressing INs were gradually and asynchronously recruited into the ictal activity during the course of seizures. Within layer 2/3, the main difference between onset of spikes and seizures lay in the relative recruitment dynamics of excitatory PNs compared to parvalbumin- and somatostatin-expressing inhibitory INs. Whereas spikes exhibited balanced recruitment of PNs and parvalbumin-expressing INs, during seizures IN responses were reduced and less synchronized than in layer 2/3 PNs. Similar imbalance was not observed in layers 4 or 5 of the neocortex. Machine learning-based algorithms we developed were able to distinguish spikes from seizures based solely on activation dynamics of layer 2/3 PNs at discharge onset.Interpretation: During onset of seizures, the recruitment dynamics markedly differed between neuronal subpopulations, with rapid synchronous recruitment of layer 2/3 PNs, layer 4 neurons, and parvalbumin-expressing INs and gradual asynchronous recruitment of layer 5 PNs and somatostatin-expressing INs. Seizures initiated in layer 2/3 due to a dynamic mismatch between local PNs and inhibitory INs, and only later spread to layer 5 by gradually and asynchronously recruiting PNs in this layer. ANN NEUROL 2020;87:97-115. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frameworks for efficient and accurate data processing often rely on a suitable representation of measurements that capture phenomena of interest. Typically, such representations are high-dimensional vectors obtained by a transformation of raw sensor signals such as time-frequency transform, lag-map, etc. In this work, we focus on representation learning approaches that consider the measurements as the nodes of a weighted graph, with edge weights computed by a given kernel. If the kernel is chosen properly, the eigenvectors of the resulting graph affinity matrix provide suitable representation coordinates for the measurements. Consequently, tasks such as regression, classification, and filtering, can be done more efficiently than in the original domain of the data. In this paper, we address the problem of representation learning from measurements, which besides the phenomenon of interest contain undesired sources of variability. We propose data-driven kernels to learn representations that accurately parametrize the phenomenon of interest, while reducing variations due to other sources of variability. This is a non-linear filtering problem, which we approach under the assumption that certain geometric information about the undesired variables can be extracted from the measurements, e.g., using an auxiliary sensor. The applicability of the proposed kernels is demonstrated in toy problems and in a real signal processing task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fundamental question in data analysis, machine learning and signal processing is how to compare between data points. The choice of the distance metric is specifically challenging for high-dimensional data sets, where the problem of meaningfulness is more prominent (e.g. the Euclidean distance between images). In this paper, we propose to exploit a property of high-dimensional data that is usually ignored, which is the structure stemming from the relationships between the coordinates. Specifically, we show that organizing similar coordinates in clusters can be exploited for the construction of the Mahalanobis distance between samples. When the observable samples are generated by a nonlinear transformation of hidden variables, the Mahalanobis distance allows the recovery of the Euclidean distances in the hidden space. We illustrate the advantage of our approach on a synthetic example where the discovery of clusters of correlated coordinates improves the estimation of the principal directions of the samples. Our method was applied to real data of gene expression for lung adenocarcinomas (lung cancer). By using the proposed metric we found a partition of subjects to risk groups with a good separation between their Kaplan–Meier survival plot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the problem of domain adaptation. We propose to view the data through the lens of covariance matrices and present a method for domain adaptation using parallel transport on the cone manifold of symmetric positive-definite matrices. We provide rigorous analysis using Riemannian geometry, illuminating the theoretical guarantees and benefits of the presented method. In addition, we demonstrate these benefits using experimental results on simulations and real-measured data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blind source separation is addressed, using a novel data-driven approach, based on a well-established probabilistic model. The proposed method is specifically designed for separation of multichannel audio mixtures. The algorithm relies on spectral decomposition of the correlation matrix between different time frames. The probabilistic model implies that the column space of the correlation matrix is spanned by the probabilities of the various speakers across time. The number of speakers is recovered by the eigenvalue decay, and the eigenvectors form a simplex of the speakers’ probabilities. Time frames dominated by each of the speakers are identified exploiting convex geometry tools on the recovered simplex. The mixing acoustic channels are estimated utilizing the identified sets of frames, and a linear umixing is performed to extract the individual speakers. The derived simplexes are visually demonstrated for mixtures of two, three, and four speakers. We also conduct a comprehensive experimental study, showing high separation capabilities in various reverberation conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fundamental problem in multimodal signal processing is to quantify relations between two different signals with respect to a certain phenomenon. In this paper, we address this problem from a kernel-based perspective and propose a measure that is based on affinity kernels constructed separately in each modality. This measure is motivated from both a kernel density estimation point of view of predicting the signal in one modality based on the other, as well as from a statistical model, which implies that high values of the proposed measure are expected when signals highly correspond to each other. Considering an online setting, we propose an efficient algorithm for the sequential update of the proposed measure, and demonstrate its application to eye-fixation prediction in audio-visual recordings. The goal is to predict locations within a video recording at which people gaze when watching the video. As studies in psychology imply, people tend to gaze at the location of the audio source, so that their prediction becomes equivalent to locating the audio source within the video. Therefore, we propose to predict eye-fixations as regions within the video with the highest correspondence to the audio signal, thereby demonstrating the improved performance of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: When studying observations of chemical reaction dynamics, closed form equations based on a putative mechanism may not be available. Yet when sufficient data from experimental observations can be obtained, even without knowing what exactly the physical meaning of the parameter settings or recorded variables are, data‐driven methods can be used to construct minimal (and in a sense, robust) realizations of the system. The approach attempts, in a sense, to circumvent physical understanding, by building intrinsic “information geometries” of the observed data, and thus enabling prediction without physical/chemical knowledge. Here we use such an approach to obtain evolution equations for a data‐driven realization of the original system – in effect, allowing prediction based on the informed interrogation of the agnostically organized observation database. We illustrate the approach on observations of (a) the normal form for the cusp singularity, (b) a cusp singularity for the nonisothermal CSTR, and (c) a random invertible transformation of the nonisothermal CSTR, showing that one can predict even when the observables are not “simply explainable” physical quantities. We discuss current limitations and possible extensions of the procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multidisciplinary research was carried out to reach an improved understanding of the connection between the geometry of space and human emotions. The research develops a framework and methodology to empirically examine and measure human reaction to various types of architectural space geometries. It involves two stages of investigations in which participants experience four spaces characterized by different geometries. Their reaction to the spaces was investigated by means of both qualitative and quantitative methods, which involved questionnaires in the first experiment and advanced sensors and data analysis in a second experiment. The experiments, which employ new virtual reality, electroencephalogram and data analysis methods, confirm the developed methodology. In the first stage of the investigation, participants showed different types of responses and preferences towards spaces. Results of the second stage’s experiment showed a difference in our mental reaction to different geometries of space. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we address the problem of hidden common variables discovery from multimodal data sets of nonlinear high-dimensional observations. We present a metric based on local applications of canonical correlation analysis (CCA) and incorporate it in a kernel-based manifold learning technique. We show that this metric discovers the hidden common variables underlying the multimodal observations by estimating the Euclidean distance between them. Our approach can be viewed both as an extension of CCA to a nonlinear setting as well as an extension of manifold learning to multiple data sets. Experimental results show that our method indeed discovers the common variables underlying high-dimensional nonlinear observations without assuming prior rigid model assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Analyzing signals arising from dynamical systems typically requires many modeling assumptions. In high dimensions, this modeling is particularly difficult due to the “curse of dimensionality.” In this paper, we propose a method for building an intrinsic representation of such signals in a purely data-driven manner. First, we apply a manifold learning technique, diffusion maps, to learn the intrinsic model of the latent variables of the dynamical system, solely from the measurements. Second, we use concepts and tools from control theory and build a linear contracting observer to estimate the latent variables in a sequential manner from new incoming measurements. The effectiveness of the presented framework is demonstrated by applying it to a toy problem and to a music analysis application. In these examples, we show that our method reveals the intrinsic variables of the analyzed dynamical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the wake of recent advances in experimental methods in neuroscience, the ability to record in-vivo neuronal activity from awake animals has become feasible. The availability of such rich and detailed physiological measurements calls for the development of advanced data analysis tools, as commonly used techniques do not suffice to capture the spatio-temporal network complexity. In this paper, we propose a new hierarchical coupled-geometry analysis that implicitly takes into account the connectivity structures between neurons and the dynamic patterns at multiple time scales. Our approach gives rise to the joint organization of neurons and dynamic patterns in data-driven hierarchical data structures. These structures provide local to global data representations, from local partitioning of the data in flexible trees through a new multiscale metric to a global manifold embedding. The application of our techniques to in-vivo neuronal recordings demonstrate the capability of extracting neuronal activity patterns and identifying temporal trends, associated with particular behavioral events and manipulations introduced in the experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Multi-time-scale stochastic dynamical systems are ubiquitous in science and engineering, and the reduction of such systems and their models to only their slow components is often essential for scientific computation and further analysis. Rather than being available in the form of an explicit analytical model, often such systems can only be observed as a data set which embodies dynamics on several time scales. We focus on applying and adapting data-mining and manifold learning techniques to detect the slow components in a class of such multiscale data. Traditional data-mining methods are based on metrics (and thus, geometries) which are not informed of the multiscale nature of the underlying system dynamics; such methods cannot successfully recover the slow variables. Here, we present an approach which utilizes both the local geometry and the local noise dynamics within the data set through a metric which is both insensitive to the fast variables and more general than simple statistical averaging. Our analysis of the approach provides conditions for successfully recovering the underlying slow variables, as well as an empirical protocol guiding the selection of the method parameters. Interestingly, the recovered underlying variables are gauge invariant--they are insensitive to the measuring instrument/observation function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a detection method based on data-driven target modeling, which implicitly handles variations in the target appearance. Given a training set of images of the target, our approach constructs models based on local neighborhoods within the training set. We present a new metric using these models and show that, by controlling the notion of locality within the training set, this metric is invariant to perturbations in the appearance of the target. Using this metric in a supervised graph framework, we construct a low-dimensional embedding of test images. Then, a detection score based on the embedding determines the presence of a target in each image. The method is applied to a data set of side-scan sonar images and achieves impressive results in the detection of sea mines. The proposed framework is general and can be applied to different target detection problems in a broad range of signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, two modern adaptive signal processing techniques, empirical intrinsic geometry and synchrosqueezing transform, are applied to quantify different dynamical features of the respiratory and electroencephalographic signals. We show that the proposed features are theoretically rigorously supported, as well as capture the sleep information hidden inside the signals. The features are used as input to multiclass support vector machines with the radial basis function to automatically classify sleep stages. The effectiveness of the classification based on the proposed features is shown to be comparable to human expert classification—the proposed classification of awake, REM, N1, N2, and N3 sleeping stages based on the respiratory signal (resp. respiratory and EEG signals) has the overall accuracy $81.7\%$ (resp. $89.3\%$) in the relatively normal subject group. In addition, by examining the combination of the respiratory signal with the electroencephalographic signal, we conclude that the respiratory signal consists of ample sleep information, which supplements to the information stored in the electroencephalographic signal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Signal processing methods have significantly changed over the last several decades. Traditional methods were usually based on parametric statistical inference and linear filters. These frameworks have helped to develop efficient algorithms that have often been suitable for implementation on digital signal processing (DSP) systems. Over the years, DSP systems have advanced rapidly, and their computational capabilities have been substantially increased. This development has enabled contemporary signal processing algorithms to incorporate more computations. Consequently, we have recently experienced a growing interaction between signal processing and machine-learning approaches, e.g., Bayesian networks, graphical models, and kernel-based methods, whose computational burden is usually high. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we present a supervised graph-based framework for sequential processing and employ it to the problem of transient interference suppression. Transients typically consist of an initial peak followed by decaying short-duration oscillations. Such sounds, e.g., keyboard typing and door knocking, often arise as an interference in everyday applications: hearing aids, hands-free accessories, mobile phones, and conference-room devices. We describe a graph construction using a noisy speech signal and training recordings of typical transients. The main idea is to capture the transient interference structure, which may emerge from the construction of the graph. The graph parametrization is then viewed as a data-driven model of the transients and utilized to define a filter that extracts the transients from noisy speech measurements. Unlike previous transient interference suppression studies, in this work the graph is constructed in advance from training recordings. Then, the graph is extended to newly acquired measurements, providing a sequential filtering framework of noisy speech. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Modeling natural and artificial systems has played a key role in various applications and has long been a task that has drawn enormous efforts. In this work, instead of exploring predefined models, we aim to identify implicitly the system degrees of freedom. This approach circumvents the dependency of a specific predefined model for a specific task or system and enables a generic data-driven method to characterize a system based solely on its output observations. We claim that each system can be viewed as a black box controlled by several independent parameters. Moreover, we assume that the perceptual characterization of the system output is determined by these independent parameters. Consequently, by recovering the independent controlling parameters, we find in fact a generic model for the system. In this work, we propose a supervised algorithm to recover the controlling parameters of natural and artificial linear systems. The proposed algorithm relies on nonlinear independent component analysis using diffusion kernels and spectral analysis. Employment of the proposed algorithm on both synthetic and practical examples has shown accurate recovery of parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we propose a convolutive transfer function generalized sidelobe canceler (CTF-GSC), which is an adaptive beamformer designed for multichannel speech enhancement in reverberant environments. Using a complete system representation in the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) domain, we formulate a constrained minimization problem of total output noise power subject to the constraint that the signal component of the output is the desired signal, up to some prespecified filter. Then, we employ the general sidelobe canceler (GSC) structure to transform the problem into an equivalent unconstrained form by decoupling the constraint and the minimization. The CTF-GSC is obtained by applying a convolutive transfer function (CTF) approximation on the GSC scheme, which is a more accurate and a less restrictive than a multiplicative transfer function (MTF) approximation. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed beamformer outperforms the transfer function GSC (TF-GSC) in reverberant environments and achieves both improved noise reduction and reduced speech distortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a relative transfer function (RTF) identification method for speech sources in reverberant environments. The proposed method is based on the convolutive transfer function (CTF) approximation, which enables to represent a linear convolution in the time domain as a linear convolution in the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) domain. Unlike restrictive and commonly used multiplicative transfer function (MTF) approximation, which becomes more accurate when length of a time frame increases relative to the length of impulse response, the CTF approximation enables representation of long impulse responses using short time frames. We develop an unbiased RTF estimator that exploits the nonstationarity presence probability of the speech signal and derive an analytic expression for the estimator variance. Experimental results that the proposed method is advantageous compared to common RTF identification methods in various acoustic environments, especially when identifying long RTFs typical to real rooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrate the identification of topological phase transitions from experimental data using diffusion maps: a nonlocal unsupervised machine learning method. We analyze experimental data from an optical system undergoing a topological phase transition and demonstrate the ability of this approach to identify topological phase transitions even when the data originates from a small part of the system, and does not even include edge states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive movements are critical for animal survival. To guide future actions, the brain monitors various outcomes, including achievement of movement and appetitive goals. The nature of these outcome signals and their neuronal and network realization in the motor cortex (M1), which directs skilled movements, is largely unknown. Using a dexterity task, calcium imaging, optogenetic perturbations, and behavioral manipulations, we studied outcome signals in the murine forelimb M1. We found two populations of layer 2–3 neurons, termed success- and failure-related neurons, that develop with training, and report end results of trials. In these neurons, prolonged responses were recorded after success or failure trials independent of reward and kinematics. In addition, the initial state of layer 5 pyramidal tract neurons contained a memory trace of the previous trial's outcome. Intertrial cortical activity was needed to learn new task requirements. These M1 layer-specific performance outcome signals may support reinforcement motor learning of skilled behavior. • Populations of layer 2–3 pyramidal neurons in M1 report motor performance outcome • Success and failure activity is late, prolonged, and dissociated from kinematics and reward • At trial start, layer 5 pyramidal tract activity is affected by previous outcome • Post-movement activity in M1 is required for motor performance and learning Monitoring outcome is critical for acquiring skilled movements. Levy et al. describe activity in subpopulations of layer 2–3 motor cortex pyramidal neurons that distinctly report outcomes of previous successes and failures independent of kinematics and reward. These signals may serve as reinforcement learning processes involved in maintaining or learning skilled movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. We aimed to fuse the outputs of different electrocardiogram-derived respiration (EDR) algorithms to create one higher quality EDR signal. Methods. We viewed each EDR algorithm as a software sensor that recorded breathing activity from a different vantage point, identified high-quality software sensors based on the respiratory signal quality index, aligned the highest-quality EDRs with a phase synchronization technique based on the graph connection Laplacian, and finally fused those aligned, high-quality EDRs. We refer to the output as the sync-ensembled EDR signal. The proposed algorithm was evaluated on two large-scale databases of whole-night polysomnograms. We evaluated the performance of the proposed algorithm using three respiratory signals recorded from different hardware sensors, and compared it with other existing EDR algorithms. A sensitivity analysis was carried out for a total of five cases: fusion by taking the mean of EDR signals, and the four cases of EDR signal alignment without and with synchronization and without and with signal quality selection. Results. The sync-ensembled EDR algorithm outperforms existing EDR algorithms when evaluated by the synchronized correlation (γ-score), optimal transport (OT) distance, and estimated average respiratory rate score, all with statistical significance. The sensitivity analysis shows that the signal quality selection and EDR signal alignment are both critical for the performance, both with statistical significance. Conclusion. The sync-ensembled EDR provides robust respiratory information from electrocardiogram. Significance. Phase synchronization is not only theoretically rigorous but also practical to design a robust EDR., (© 2024 Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine.)