Modeling neural connectivity of caenorhabditis elegans

Little research has been done regarding the use of modeling techniques to estimate the connectivity of a nervous system by analyzing data recorded from its neurons. In this thesis, three main methods were implemented to solve this task: Bayesian inference, artificial neural networks, and ODE reverse engineering. The goal is to apply these methods to data recorded from C. elegans neurons and estimate the connections between these. The top two performing methods on simulated data were feed-forward neural networks and ODE reverse engineering. The worst performing methods were recurrent neural networks and Bayesian inference. Out of the methods tried, feed-forward neural network was the most robust to changes in parameters of the simulation network and noise. Furthermore, this technique is easily generalizable since it did not rely on any particular feature of the simulation network to achieve its good performance. Nevertheless, all methods are easily reproducible for any further research.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Fabre, Guadalupe I

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Steven W. Flavell.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/112842

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/112842