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GerstnerLab

@gerstnerlab.bsky.social
369 followers 119 following 23 posts

The Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience @EPFL studies models of neurons, networks of neurons, synaptic plasticity, and learning in the brain.

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GerstnerLab @gerstnerlab.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Local self-supervised rules (CLAPP, LPL, layerwise SimCLR) succeed with the same data efficiency as supervised backprop. These algorithms need no backward pass because they optimize separate objectives at each layer. The weight-updates can be written as Hebbian-like plasticity rules.
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GerstnerLab @gerstnerlab.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Direct Feedback Alignment and its variants fail to learn hidden hierarchies, even with near-optimal feedback weights. The reason: DFA ignores input-specific masking - the derivative of forward activations. In controlled experiments, we demonstrate its necessity in approximating backpropagation.
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GerstnerLab @gerstnerlab.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
We use the Random Hierarchy Model (RHM, arxiv.org/abs/2307.02129) to generate a family of artificial datasets with an intrinsic hierarchical structure and adjustable degree of complexity. It can be seen as a controlled proxy for vision or language data.
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GerstnerLab @gerstnerlab.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
How can the brain learn the hidden hierarchical structure from high dimensional data? In our latest work, we use synthetic datasets to analyze two classes of bio-plausible learning rules: variants of Direct Feedback Alignment, and local self-supervised learning. We find only the latter succeeds.
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GerstnerLab @gerstnerlab.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
We designed a Gating/Availabilty model that detects selective neurons - most useful neuron for the task - during learning, shunt activity of the others (Gating) and decrease the learning rate of task selective neuron (Availability)
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