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A new generation of molecular tools for analyzing neural activity has been contributing to elucidate classical open questions in neuroscience. With enhanced GEVIs and advanced optical imaging techniques, voltage-imaging technologies have been increasingly used to observe the dynamics of large circuits. In this chapter, we describe how to combine cortical wide-field voltage imaging with hippocampal electrophysiology in awake behaving mice. Furthermore, we highlight how this method can be useful for different possible investigations., Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures

When a Genetic Algorithm (GA), or a stochastic algorithm in general, is employed in a statistical problem, the obtained result is affected by both variability due to sampling, that refers to the fact that only a sample is observed, and variability due to the stochastic elements of the algorithm. This topic can be easily set in a framework of statistical and computational tradeoff question, crucial in recent problems, for which statisticians must carefully set statistical and computational part of the analysis, taking account of some resource or time constraints. In the present work we analyze estimation problems tackled by GAs, for which variability of estimates can be decomposed in the two sources of variability, considering some constraints in the form of cost functions, related to both data acquisition and runtime of the algorithm. Simulation studies will be presented to discuss the statistical and computational tradeoff question., Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures

We use co-evolutionary genetic algorithms to model the players' learning process in several Cournot models, and evaluate them in terms of their convergence to the Nash Equilibrium. The "social-learning" versions of the two co-evolutionary algorithms we introduce, establish Nash Equilibrium in those models, in contrast to the "individual learning" versions which, as we see here, do not imply the convergence of the players' strategies to the Nash outcome. When players use "canonical co-evolutionary genetic algorithms" as learning algorithms, the process of the game is an ergodic Markov Chain, and therefore we analyze simulation results using both the relevant methodology and more general statistical tests, to find that in the "social" case, states leading to NE play are highly frequent at the stationary distribution of the chain, in contrast to the "individual learning" case, when NE is not reached at all in our simulations; to find that the expected Hamming distance of the states at the limiting distribution from the "NE state" is significantly smaller in the "social" than in the "individual learning case"; to estimate the expected time that the "social" algorithms need to get to the "NE state" and verify their robustness and finally to show that a large fraction of the games played are indeed at the Nash Equilibrium., Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures

Dynamic factor models have a wide range of applications in econometrics and applied economics. The basic motivation resides in their capability of reducing a large set of time series to only few indicators (factors). If the number of time series is large compared to the available number of observations then most information may be conveyed to the factors. This way low dimension models may be estimated for explaining and forecasting one or more time series of interest. It is desirable that outlier free time series be available for estimation. In practice, outlying observations are likely to arise at unknown dates due, for instance, to external unusual events or gross data entry errors. Several methods for outlier detection in time series are available. Most methods, however, apply to univariate time series while even methods designed for handling the multivariate framework do not include dynamic factor models explicitly. A method for discovering outliers occurrences in a dynamic factor model is introduced that is based on linear transforms of the observed data. Some strategies to separate outliers that add to the model and outliers within the common component are discussed. Applications to simulated and real data sets are presented to check the effectiveness of the proposed method., Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-EJS082 the Electronic Journal of Statistics (http://www.i-journals.org/ejs/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org)

A recurrent neural network model storing multiple spatial maps, or ``charts'', is analyzed. A network of this type has been suggested as a model for the origin of place cells in the hippocampus of rodents. The extremely diluted and fully connected limits are studied, and the storage capacity and the information capacity are found. The important parameters determining the performance of the network are the sparsity of the spatial representations and the degree of connectivity, as found already for the storage of individual memory patterns in the general theory of auto-associative networks. Such results suggest a quantitative parallel between theories of hippocampal function in different animal species, such as primates (episodic memory) and rodents (memory for space)., Comment: 19 RevTeX pages, 8 pes figures