A comparison of partial information decompositions using data from real and simulated layer 5b pyramidal cells

TL;DR

This study compares five partial information decomposition methods on real and simulated pyramidal cell data, revealing differences in synergy, shared, and unique information estimates, and supporting previous findings on dendritic inhibition effects.

Contribution

It systematically evaluates and contrasts multiple partial information decomposition methods using biological and simulated neural data, highlighting their differences and consistencies.

Findings

Two methods estimate higher synergy and shared information.

Most methods agree on the reduction of apical amplification by dendritic inhibition.

Decompositions support properties of cooperative context-sensitivity.

Abstract

Partial information decomposition allows the joint mutual information between an output and a set of inputs to be divided into components that are synergistic or shared or unique to each input. We consider five different decompositions and compare their results on data from layer 5b pyramidal cells in two different studies. The first study was of the amplification of somatic action potential output by apical dendritic input and its regulation by dendritic inhibition. We find that two of the decompositions produce much larger estimates of synergy and shared information than the others, as well as large levels of unique misinformation. When within-neuron differences in the components are examined, the five methods produce more similar results for all but the shared information component, for which two methods produce a different statistical conclusion from the others. There are some differences in the expression of unique information asymmetry among the methods. It is significantly larger, on average, under dendritic inhibition. Three of the methods support a previous conclusion that apical amplification is reduced by dendritic inhibition. The second study used a detailed compartmental model to produce action potentials for many combinations of the numbers of basal and apical synaptic inputs. Two analyses of decompositions are conducted on subsets of the data. In the first, the decompositions reveal a bifurcation in unique information asymmetry. For three of the methods this suggests that apical drive switches to basal drive as the strength of the basal input increases, while the other two show changing mixtures of information and misinformation. Decompositions produced using the second set of subsets show that all five decompositions provide support for properties of cooperative context-sensitivity - to varying extents.