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Rui Ponte Costa

6 accepted papers

2025

Brain-Like Processing Pathways Form in Models With Heterogeneous Experts

NeurIPS 2025poster

The brain is made up of a vast set of heterogeneous regions that dynamically organize into pathways as a function of task demands. Examples of such pathways can be found in the interactions between cortical and subcortical networks during learning, or in sub-networks specializing for task characteri…

Cited by 0SourceScholar
2022

Lost in Latent Space: Examining failures of disentangled models at combinatorial generalisation

NeurIPS 2022accept

Recent research has shown that generative models with highly disentangled representations fail to generalise to unseen combination of generative factor values. These findings contradict earlier research which showed improved performance in out-of-training distribution settings when compared to entan…

Cited by 27SourcePDFScholar
2022

Single-phase deep learning in cortico-cortical networks

NeurIPS 2022accept

The error-backpropagation (backprop) algorithm remains the most common solution to the credit assignment problem in artificial neural networks. In neuroscience, it is unclear whether the brain could adopt a similar strategy to correctly modify its synapses. Recent models have attempted to bridge thi…

2021

Cortico-cerebellar networks as decoupling neural interfaces

NeurIPS 2021poster

The brain solves the credit assignment problem remarkably well. For credit to be assigned across neural networks they must, in principle, wait for specific neural computations to finish. How the brain deals with this inherent locking problem has remained unclear. Deep learning methods suffer from si…

2021

The role of Disentanglement in Generalisation

ICLR 2021poster

Combinatorial generalisation — the ability to understand and produce novel combinations of familiar elements — is a core capacity of human intelligence that current AI systems struggle with. Recently, it has been suggested that learning disentangled representations may help address this problem. It…

Cited by 118SourcePDFScholar
2018

Dendritic cortical microcircuits approximate the backpropagation algorithm

NeurIPS 2018oral

Deep learning has seen remarkable developments over the last years, many of them inspired by neuroscience. However, the main learning mechanism behind these advances – error backpropagation – appears to be at odds with neurobiology. Here, we introduce a multilayer neuronal network model with simplif…

Cited by 395SourcePDFScholar