# Capturing cross-session neural population variability through self-supervised identification of consistent neuron ensembles

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.09829 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09829/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 26 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 May 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Learning Phrase Representations using RNN Encoder-Decoder for Statistical Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.1078/) (2014)
- [Auto-Encoding Variational Bayes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6114/) (2013)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Visual Representations by Solving Jigsaw Puzzles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.09246/) (2016)
- [Mine Your Own vieW: Self-Supervised Learning Through Across-Sample Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.10106/) (2021)
- [Adversarial Domain Adaptation for Stable Brain-Machine Interfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00045/) (2018)
- [Making brain-machine interfaces robust to future neural variability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.05872/) (2016)
- [Drop, Swap, and Generate: A Self-Supervised Approach for Generating Neural Activity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.02338/) (2021)
- [Robust alignment of cross-session recordings of neural population activity by behaviour via unsupervised domain adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06159/) (2022)
- [Building population models for large-scale neural recordings: opportunities and pitfalls](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.01807/) (2021)
- [Deep inference of latent dynamics with spatio-temporal super-resolution using selective backpropagation through time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00070/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Self-Supervised Consistency Enhanced Disentangled Learning for Neural Decoding Generalization in Brain-Machine Interface](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.24023/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Decoding stimuli or behaviour from recorded neural activity is a common approach to interrogate brain function in research, and an essential part of brain-computer and brain-machine interfaces. Reliable decoding even from small neural populations is possible because high dimensional neural population activity typically occupies low dimensional manifolds that are discoverable with suitable latent variable models. Over time however, drifts in activity of individual neurons and instabilities in neural recording devices can be substantial, making stable decoding over days and weeks impractical. While this drift cannot be predicted on an individual neuron level, population level variations over consecutive recording sessions such as differing sets of neurons and varying permutations of consistent neurons in recorded data may be learnable when the underlying manifold is stable over time. Classification of consistent versus unfamiliar neurons across sessions and accounting for deviations in the order of consistent recording neurons in recording datasets over sessions of recordings may then maintain decoding performance. In this work we show that self-supervised training of a deep neural network can be used to compensate for this inter-session variability. As a result, a sequential autoencoding model can maintain state-of-the-art behaviour decoding performance for completely unseen recording sessions several days into the future. Our approach only requires a single recording session for training the model, and is a step towards reliable, recalibration-free brain computer interfaces.