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This paper provides a methodology to better understand the relationships between different aspects of vocal fold motion, which are used as features in machine learning-based approaches for detecting respiratory infections from voice recordings. The relationships are derived through a joint multivariate analysis of the vocal fold oscillations of speakers. Specifically, the multivariate setting explores the displacements and velocities of the left and right vocal folds derived from recordings of five extended vowel sounds for each speaker (/aa/, /iy/, /ey/, /uw/, and /ow/). In this multivariate setting, the differences between the bivariate and conditional interactions are analyzed by information-theoretic quantities based on transfer entropy. Incorporation of the conditional quantities reveals information regarding the confounding factors that can influence the statistical interactions among other pairs of variables. This is demonstrated on a vector autoregressive process where the analytical derivations can be carried out. As a proof of concept, the methodology is applied on a clinically curated dataset of COVID-19. The findings suggest that the interaction between the vocal fold oscillations can change according to individuals and presence of any respiratory infection, such as COVID-19. The results are important in the sense that the proposed approach can be utilized to determine the selection of appropriate features as a supplementary or early detection tool in voice-based diagnostics in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the dynamics of coupled neurons is one of the fundamental problems in the analysis of neuronal model dynamics. The transfer entropy (TE) method is one of the primary analyses to explore the information flow between the neuronal populations. We perform the TE analysis on the two-neuron conductance-based Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) neuronal network to analyze how their connectivity changes due to conductances. We find that the information flow due to underlying synaptic connectivity changes direction by changing conductances individually and/or simultaneously as a result of TE analysis through numerical simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review looks at some of the central relationships between artificial intelligence, psychology, and economics through the lens of information theory, specifically focusing on formal models of decision-theory. In doing so we look at a particular approach that each field has adopted and how information theory has informed the development of the ideas of each field. A key theme is expected utility theory, its connection to information theory, the Bayesian approach to decision-making and forms of (bounded) rationality. What emerges from this review is a broadly unified formal perspective derived from three very different starting points that reflect the unique principles of each field. Each of the three approaches reviewed can, in principle at least, be implemented in a computational model in such a way that, with sufficient computational power, they could be compared with human abilities in complex tasks. However, a central critique that can be applied to all three approaches was first put forward by Savage in The Foundations of Statistics and recently brought to the fore by the economist Binmore: Bayesian approaches to decision-making work in what Savage called 'small worlds' but cannot work in 'large worlds'. This point, in various different guises, is central to some of the current debates about the power of artificial intelligence and its relationship to human-like learning and decision-making. Recent work on artificial intelligence has gone some way to bridging this gap but significant questions remain to be answered in all three fields in order to make progress in producing realistic models of human decision-making in the real world in which we live in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous investigations concluded that the human brain's information processing rate remains fundamentally constant, irrespective of task demands. However, their conclusion rested in analyses of simple discrete-choice tasks. The present contribution recasts the question of human information rate within the context of visuomotor tasks, which provides a more ecologically relevant arena, albeit a more complex one. We argue that, while predictable aspects of inputs can be encoded virtually free of charge, real-time information transfer should be identified with the processing of surprises. We formalise this intuition by deriving from first principles a decomposition of the total information shared by inputs and outputs into a feedforward, predictive component and a feedback, error-correcting component. We find that the information measured by the feedback component, a proxy for the brain's information processing rate, scales with the difficulty of the task at hand, in agreement with cost-benefit models of cognitive effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuronal noise is a major factor affecting the communication between coupled neurons. In this work, we propose a statistical toolset to infer the coupling between two neurons under noise. We estimate these statistical dependencies from data which are generated by a coupled Hodgkin–Huxley (HH) model with additive noise. To infer the coupling using observation data, we employ copulas and information-theoretic quantities, such as the mutual information (MI) and the transfer entropy (TE). Copulas and MI between two variables are symmetric quantities, whereas TE is asymmetric. We demonstrate the performances of copulas and MI as functions of different noise levels and show that they are effective in the identification of the interactions due to coupling and noise. Moreover, we analyze the inference of TE values between neurons as a function of noise and conclude that TE is an effective tool for finding out the direction of coupling between neurons under the effects of noise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]