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  • Gradient-Based Training of Slow Feature Analysis and Spectral Embeddings
2018
2019
Gradient-Based Training of Slow Feature Analysis and Spectral Embeddings

In this project we investigate methods that receive high-dimensional  (e.g., visual) data and extract low-dimensional representations that are coherent under temporal proximity or under any other symmetric similarity metric.

Previous work on the topic has shown the efficacy of such representations as a base for goal-directed learning [1, 2] as well as structural data analysis [3, 4]. Furthermore, temporal coherence has been proposed as a principle to model neurophysiological phenomena, such as the formation of distinct oriospatial responses in the mammalian hippocampus: a hypothesis that has been substantiated by theoretical and simulated experimental evaluation [5].

Figure 1: NORB [6] photographs of toy plane embedded by a version of gradient-based SFA. Coherence based on rotation + elevation similarity, architecture is a Google MobileNet [7].

When coloring in the rotation angle (pink-to-pink) or the elevation (red-to-pink) it is apparent that these properties are disentangled and well preserved in the structure of the three-dimensional embedding. This holds even for unseen photographs of the same toy. Collapse onto a single point is prevented by differentiable whitening. 


However, most of this work was limited in the choice of the approximators used for extraction. Past models where either shallow or relied on stacking shallowly-trained layers for hierarchical representations. Using a differentiable whitening procedure, we were able to achieve comparable results in multiple proof-of-concept settings [8] using deep feed-forward neural networks trained by stochastic gradient descent to optimize a global slowness objective. This hybrid approach allows us to tap not only into an extensive and active body of research regarding deep model design, but also into the well-understood theoretical foundations of slow feature analysis (SFA) and spectral embeddings.

Figure 2: comparison of different methods for training linear SFA on synthetic data. From left to right: gradient-based without constraints, gradient-based with unit-variance constraint, gradient-based with differentiable whitening, optimal analytical solution.


We believe that by bridging the gap between these fields it is possible to get a better understanding of how spectral methods can be used in high-dimensional machine learning as well as new tools to investigate coherence principles in neuroscientific modelling research.


Publications

    2019

  • Gradient-based Training of Slow Feature Analysis by Differentiable Approximate Whitening
    Schüler, M., Hlynsson, H. D. ′ið, & Wiskott, L.
    In W. S. Lee & Suzuki, T. (Eds.), Proceedings of The Eleventh Asian Conference on Machine Learning (Vol. 101, pp. 316–331) Nagoya, Japan: PMLR

The Institut für Neuroinformatik (INI) is a central research unit of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. We aim to understand the fundamental principles through which organisms generate behavior and cognition while linked to their environments through sensory systems and while acting in those environments through effector systems. Inspired by our insights into such natural cognitive systems, we seek new solutions to problems of information processing in artificial cognitive systems. We draw from a variety of disciplines that include experimental approaches from psychology and neurophysiology as well as theoretical approaches from physics, mathematics, electrical engineering and applied computer science, in particular machine learning, artificial intelligence, and computer vision.

Universitätsstr. 150, Building NB, Room 3/32
D-44801 Bochum, Germany

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