An Information-Theoretic Framework to Measure the Dynamic Interaction between Neural Spike Trains
Understanding the interaction patterns among simultaneous recordings of spike trains from multiple neuronal units is a key topic in neuroscience. However, an optimal approach of assessing these interactions has not been established, as existing methods either do not consider the inherent point process nature of spike trains or are based on parametric assumptions that may lead to wrong inferences if not met. This work presents a framework, grounded in the field of information dynamics, for the model-free, continuous-time estimation of both undirected (symmetric) and directed (causal) interactions between pairs of spike trains. The framework decomposes the overall information exchanged dynami…
Spectral decomposition of cerebrovascular and cardiovascular interactions in patients prone to postural syncope and healthy controls.
We present a framework for the linear parametric analysis of pairwise interactions in bivariate time series in the time and frequency domains, which allows the evaluation of total, causal and instantaneous interactions and connects time- and frequency-domain measures. The framework is applied to physiological time series to investigate the cerebrovascular regulation from the variability of mean cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV) and mean arterial pressure (MAP), and the cardiovascular regulation from the variability of heart period (HP) and systolic arterial pressure (SAP). We analyze time series acquired at rest and during the early and late phase of head-up tilt in subjects developing or…
A new framework for the time- and frequency-domain assessment of high-order interactions in networks of random processes
While the standard network description of complex systems is based on quantifying the link between pairs of system units, higher-order interactions (HOIs) involving three or more units often play a major role in governing the collective network behavior. This work introduces a new approach to quantify pairwise and HOIs for multivariate rhythmic processes interacting across multiple time scales. We define the so-called O-information rate (OIR) as a new metric to assess HOIs for multivariate time series, and present a framework to decompose the OIR into measures quantifying Granger-causal and instantaneous influences, as well as to expand all measures in the frequency domain. The framework ex…
A measure of concurrent neural firing activity based on mutual information
AbstractMultiple methods have been developed in an attempt to quantify stimulus-induced neural coordination and to understand internal coordination of neuronal responses by examining the synchronization phenomena in neural discharge patterns. In this work we propose a novel approach to estimate the degree of concomitant firing between two neural units, based on a modified form of mutual information (MI) applied to a two-state representation of the firing activity. The binary profile of each single unit unfolds its discharge activity in time by decomposition into the state of neural quiescence/low activity and state of moderate firing/bursting. Then, the MI computed between the two binary st…
Measuring High-Order Interactions in Rhythmic Processes Through Multivariate Spectral Information Decomposition
Many complex systems in physics, biology and engineering are modeled as dynamical networks and described using multivariate time series analysis. Recent developments have shown that the emergent dynamics of a network system are significantly affected by interactions involving multiple network nodes which cannot be described using pairwise links. While these higher-order interactions can be probed using information-theoretic measures, a rigorous framework to describe them in the frequency domain is still lacking. This work presents an approach for the spectral decomposition of multivariate information measures, capable of identifying higher-order synergistic and redundant interactions betwee…
Information decomposition in the frequency domain: a new framework to study cardiovascular and cardiorespiratory oscillations
While cross-spectral and information-theoretic approaches are widely used for the multivariate analysis of physiological time series, their combined utilization is far less developed in the literature. This study introduces a framework for the spectral decomposition of multivariate information measures, which provides frequency-specific quantifications of the information shared between a target and two source time series and of its expansion into amounts related to how the sources contribute to the target dynamics with unique, redundant and synergistic information. The framework is illustrated in simulations of linearly interacting stochastic processes, showing how it allows us to retrieve …
Measuring the Rate of Information Transfer in Point-Process Data: Application to Cardiovascular Interactions
We present the implementation to cardiovascular variability of a method for the information-theoretic estimation of the directed interactions between event-based data. The method allows to compute the transfer entropy rate (TER) from a source to a target point process in continuous time, thus overcoming the severe limitations associated with time discretization of event-based processes. In this work, the method is evaluated on coupled cardiovascular point processes representing the heartbeat dynamics and the related peripheral pulsation, first using a physiologically-based simulation model and then studying real point-process data from healthy subjects monitored at rest and during postural …
Complexity and Nonlinearity Analysis of the Time Series of Electric Field Intensity
In this work, the conditional entropy (CE) and the method of surrogate data are applied on time series of electric field (EF) intensity to explore their degree of complexity and the possible presence of nonlinear dynamics. The time series were obtained during the wide-band cumulative EF intensity monitoring, performed by one sensor of the Serbian EMF RATEL monitoring system installed in the campus area of the University of Novi Sad, and are re-sampled at one sample per two hours over consecutive time epochs of one month duration. The field intensity measurements during the years 2019 and 2020 allowed us to explore the effects of mobility restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic on the …
Measuring the Rate of Information Exchange in Point-Process Data With Application to Cardiovascular Variability
The amount of information exchanged per unit of time between two dynamic processes is an important concept for the analysis of complex systems. Theoretical formulations and data-efficient estimators have been recently introduced for this quantity, known as the mutual information rate (MIR), allowing its continuous-time computation for event-based data sets measured as realizations of coupled point processes. This work presents the implementation of MIR for point process applications in Network Physiology and cardiovascular variability, which typically feature short and noisy experimental time series. We assess the bias of MIR estimated for uncoupled point processes in the frame of surrogate…
Assessment of Cardiorespiratory Interactions During Spontaneous and Controlled Breathing: Non-linear Model-free Analysis
In this work, nonlinear model-free methods for bivariate time series analysis have been applied to study cardiorespiratory interactions. Specifically, entropy-based (i.e. Transfer Entropy and Cross Entropy) and Convergent Cross Mapping asymmetric coupling measures have been computed on heart rate and breathing time series extracted from electrocardiographic (ECG) and respiratory signals acquired on 19 young healthy subjects during an experimental protocol including spontaneous and controlled breathing conditions. Results evidence a bidirectional nature of cardiorespiratory interactions, and highlight clear similarities and differences among the three considered measures.
A Measure of Concurrent Neural Firing Activity Based on Mutual Information
Multiple methods have been developed in an attempt to quantify stimulus-induced neural coordination and to understand internal coordination of neuronal responses by examining the synchronization phenomena in neural discharge patterns. In this work we propose a novel approach to estimate the degree of concomitant firing between two neural units, based on a modified form of mutual information (MI) applied to a two-state representation of the firing activity. The binary profile of each single unit unfolds its discharge activity in time by decomposition into the state of neural quiescence/low activity and state of moderate firing/bursting. Then, the MI computed between the two binary streams is…
Information – theoretic characterization of concurrent activity of neural spike trains
The analysis of massively parallel spike train recordings facilitates investigation of communications and synchronization in neural networks. In this work we develop and evaluate a measure of concurrent neural activity, which is based on intrinsic firing properties of the recorded neural units. An overall single neuron activity is unfolded in time and decomposed into working and non-firing state, providing a coarse, binary representation of the neurons functional state. We propose a modified measure of mutual information to reflect the degree of simultaneous activation and concurrency in neural firing patterns. The measure is shown to be sensitive to both correlations and anti-correlations,…
Assessment of Cardiorespiratory Interactions during Apneic Events in Sleep via Fuzzy Kernel Measures of Information Dynamics
Apnea and other breathing-related disorders have been linked to the development of hypertension or impairments of the cardiovascular, cognitive or metabolic systems. The combined assessment of multiple physiological signals acquired during sleep is of fundamental importance for providing additional insights about breathing disorder events and the associated impairments. In this work, we apply information-theoretic measures to describe the joint dynamics of cardiorespiratory physiological processes in a large group of patients reporting repeated episodes of hypopneas, apneas (central, obstructive, mixed) and respiratory effort related arousals (RERAs). We analyze the heart period as the targ…
Information Dynamics of Electric Field Intensity before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
This work investigates the temporal statistical structure of time series of electric field (EF) intensity recorded with the aim of exploring the dynamical patterns associated with periods with different human activity in urban areas. The analyzed time series were obtained from a sensor of the EMF RATEL monitoring system installed in the campus area of the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. The sensor performs wideband cumulative EF intensity monitoring of all active commercial EF sources, thus including those linked to human utilization of wireless communication systems. Monitoring was performed continuously during the years 2019 and 2020, allowing us to investigate the effects on the patterns…
Quantifying High-Order Interactions in Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular Networks
We present a method to analyze the dynamics of physiological networks beyond the framework of pairwise interactions. Our method defines the so-called O-information rate (OIR) as a measure of the higher-order interaction among several physiological variables. The OIR measure is computed from the vector autoregressive representation of multiple time series, and is applied to the network formed by heart period, systolic and diastolic arterial pressure, respiration and cerebral blood flow variability series measured in healthy subjects at rest and after head-up tilt. Our results document that cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and respiratory interactions are highly redundant, and that redundancy …
A new Framework for the Spectral Information Decomposition of Multivariate Gaussian Processes
: Different information-theoretic measures are available in the literature for the study of pairwise and higher-order interactions in multivariate dynamical systems. While these measures operate in the time domain, several physiological and non-physiological systems exhibit a rich oscillatory content that is typically analyzed in the frequency domain through spectral and cross-spectral approaches. For Gaussian systems, the relation between information and spectral measures has been established considering coupling and causality measures, but not for higher-order interactions. To fill this gap, in this work we introduce an information-theoretic framework in the frequency domain to quantify t…