Measuring What We Mean: Neural Properties and the Tools That Stand In for Them

Welcome to our ABC Seminars! This seminar series is open for everyone. The talk will take place in Otakaari 1, Room A1 (A123). After the talks, coffee and pulla will be served.

The event will be also streamed via Zoom at: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/67444945844

Title:

Measuring What We Mean: Neural Properties and the Tools That Stand In for Them

Abstract:

We rarely observe the neural properties we care about. Instead, we compute a proxy (a spectral component, a connectivity estimate, an entropy, a dimensionality) and treat it as the property itself. This talk is about the tension that opens up in that substitution: between the target property we intend to characterize and the statistical or mathematical tool we use to stand in for it. I will draw examples from across methods work in electrophysiology and functional connectivity. The aperiodic (1/f) component is one case: amplitude modulation of an oscillation reproduces the same spectral signature attributed to a separate “aperiodic” process, so the spectrum underdetermines which mechanism is present. Connectivity and causality measures raise the same issue in a different guise, where the estimated interaction is a property of the estimator as much as of the system. My aim is not to catalogue artifacts but to take the tension seriously as a conceptual problem: a given mathematical tool carves the signal in a particular way, and that choice quietly fixes what can and cannot be concluded. I will argue that generative modeling and forward simulation are the discipline that keeps the proxy honest — that lets us state which claims about neural mechanism an observable can actually support.