Structure of this dissertation¶
This dissertation is unusual in its scope. Its chapters span multiple subfields of neuroscience and artificial intelligence. To unite these works into one dissertation, each chapter begins with a brief Foreword that provides a more general contextualization.
Machine learning plays several distinct roles in this dissertation. In a review published in Progress in Neurobiology , my co-authors and I described four categories of ways in which machine learning can assist neuroscience. These four roles are described in (Interlude) The Four Roles of Supervised Machine Learning in Systems Neuroscience:
Role 1: to help create solutions to engineering problems.
Role 2: to help in identifying variables that are predictive of something, like neural activity or disease.
Role 3: to set benchmarks for simple models of the brain.
Role 4: to itself serve as a model for understanding the brain.
In the Foreword to each chapter, I mention which of these four categories that chapter best represents. Each chapter represents work that has been published in a peer-reviewed journal or is available online as a preprint. The list of publications can be found following the conclusion.