An Application of Formal Concept Analysis to Neural Decoding

Year:
2009
Type of Publication:
Article
Authors:
Endres, Dominik
Földiák, Peter
Priss, Uta
Journal:
The 6th international conference on Concept Lattices and their Applications (CLA 2008), Olomouc, Czech Republic., CEUR-WS
Volume:
433
Pages:
181-192
Month:
02
ISSN:
1613-0073
BibTex:
Note:
reviewed
Abstract:

This paper proposes a novel application of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) to neural decoding: the semantic relationships between the neural representations of large sets of stimuli are explored using concept lattices. In particular, the effects of neural code sparsity are modelled using the lattices. An exact Bayesian approach is employed to construct the formal context needed by FCA. This method is explained using an example of neurophysiological data from the high-level visual cortical area STSa. Prominent features of the resulting concept lattices are discussed, including indications for a product-of-experts code in real neurons.