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Chengrui Li

10 accepted papers

2026

A Factorized Low-Rank RNN Framework for Uncovering Independent Neural Latent Dynamics and Connectivity

ICML 2026spotlight

Low-rank recurrent neural networks (lrRNNs) are a class of models that uncover low-dimensional latent dynamics underlying neural population activity. Although their functional connectivity is low-rank, it lacks independence interpretations, making it difficult to assign distinct computational roles …

Cited by 0SourceScholar
2026

A Hitchhiker's Guide to Poisson Gradient Estimation

ICML 2026poster

Poisson-distributed latent variable models are widely used in computational neuroscience, but differentiating through discrete stochastic samples remains challenging. Two approaches address this: *Exponential Arrival Time* (EAT) simulation and *Gumbel-SoftMax* (GSM) relaxation. We provide the first …

Cited by 0SourceScholar
2026

Uncovering Semantic Selectivity of Latent Groups in Higher Visual Cortex with Mutual Information-Guided Diffusion

ICLR 2026poster

Understanding how neural populations in higher visual areas encode object-centered visual information remains a central challenge in computational neuroscience. Prior works have investigated representational alignment between artificial neural networks and the visual cortex. Nevertheless, these find…

Cited by 0SourcecodeScholar
2025

Learning Time-Varying Multi-Region Brain Communications via Scalable Markovian Gaussian Processes

ICML 2025oral

Understanding and constructing brain communications that capture dynamic communications across multiple regions is fundamental to modern system neuroscience, yet current methods struggle to find time-varying region-level communications or scale to large neural datasets with long recording durations.…

2024

A Differentiable Partially Observable Generalized Linear Model with Forward-Backward Message Passing

ICML 2024poster

The partially observable generalized linear model (POGLM) is a powerful tool for understanding neural connectivities under the assumption of existing hidden neurons. With spike trains only recorded from visible neurons, existing works use variational inference to learn POGLM meanwhile presenting the…

Cited by 1SourcePDFScholar
2024

Exploring Behavior-Relevant and Disentangled Neural Dynamics with Generative Diffusion Models

NeurIPS 2024poster

Understanding the neural basis of behavior is a fundamental goal in neuroscience. Current research in large-scale neuro-behavioral data analysis often relies on decoding models, which quantify behavioral information in neural data but lack details on behavior encoding. This raises an intriguing scie…

2024

Forward $\chi^2$ Divergence Based Variational Importance Sampling

ICLR 2024spotlight

Maximizing the marginal log-likelihood is a crucial aspect of learning latent variable models, and variational inference (VI) stands as the commonly adopted method. However, VI can encounter challenges in achieving a high marginal log-likelihood when dealing with complicated posterior distributions.…

2024

Multi-Region Markovian Gaussian Process: An Efficient Method to Discover Directional Communications Across Multiple Brain Regions

ICML 2024poster

Studying the complex interactions between different brain regions is crucial in neuroscience. Various statistical methods have explored the latent communication across multiple brain regions. Two main categories are the Gaussian Process (GP) and Linear Dynamical System (LDS), each with unique streng…

2024

One-hot Generalized Linear Model for Switching Brain State Discovery

ICLR 2024poster

Exposing meaningful and interpretable neural interactions is critical to understanding neural circuits. Inferred neural interactions from neural signals primarily reflect functional connectivity. In a long experiment, subject animals may experience different stages defined by the experiment, stimuli…

2023

Extraction and Recovery of Spatio-Temporal Structure in Latent Dynamics Alignment with Diffusion Models

NeurIPS 2023spotlight

In the field of behavior-related brain computation, it is necessary to align raw neural signals against the drastic domain shift among them. A foundational framework within neuroscience research posits that trial-based neural population activities rely on low-dimensional latent dynamics, thus focusi…