Satpreet H. Singh

Ann Huang, Mitchell Ostrow, Satpreet H. Singh et al.

In control problems and basic scientific modeling, it is important to compare observations with dynamical simulations. For example, comparing two neural systems can shed light on the nature of emergent computations in the brain and deep neural networks. Recently, Ostrow et al. (2023) introduced Dynamical Similarity Analysis (DSA), a method to measure the similarity of two systems based on their recurrent dynamics rather than geometry or topology. However, DSA does not consider how inputs affect the dynamics, meaning that two similar systems, if driven differently, may be classified as different. Because real-world dynamical systems are rarely autonomous, it is important to account for the effects of input drive. To this end, we introduce a novel metric for comparing both intrinsic (recurrent) and input-driven dynamics, called InputDSA (iDSA). InputDSA extends the DSA framework by estimating and comparing both input and intrinsic dynamic operators using a variant of Dynamic Mode Decomposition with control (DMDc) based on subspace identification. We demonstrate that InputDSA can successfully compare partially observed, input-driven systems from noisy data. We show that when the true inputs are unknown, surrogate inputs can be substituted without a major deterioration in similarity estimates. We apply InputDSA on Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) trained with Deep Reinforcement Learning, identifying that high-performing networks are dynamically similar to one another, while low-performing networks are more diverse. Lastly, we apply InputDSA to neural data recorded from rats performing a cognitive task, demonstrating that it identifies a transition from input-driven evidence accumulation to intrinsically-driven decision-making. Our work demonstrates that InputDSA is a robust and efficient method for comparing intrinsic dynamics and the effect of external input on dynamical systems.

Satpreet H. Singh, Sonja Johnson-Yu, Zhouyang Lu et al.

Weakly electric fish, like Gnathonemus petersii, use a remarkable electrical modality for active sensing and communication, but studying their rich electrosensing and electrocommunication behavior and associated neural activity in naturalistic settings remains experimentally challenging. Here, we present a novel biologically-inspired computational framework to study these behaviors, where recurrent neural network (RNN) based artificial agents trained via multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) learn to modulate their electric organ discharges (EODs) and movement patterns to collectively forage in virtual environments. Trained agents demonstrate several emergent features consistent with real fish collectives, including heavy tailed EOD interval distributions, environmental context dependent shifts in EOD interval distributions, and social interaction patterns like freeloading, where agents reduce their EOD rates while benefiting from neighboring agents' active sensing. A minimal two-fish assay further isolates the role of electro-communication, showing that access to conspecific EODs and relative dominance jointly shape foraging success. Notably, these behaviors emerge through evolution-inspired rewards for individual fitness and emergent inter-agent interactions, rather than through rewarding agents explicitly for social interactions. Our work has broad implications for the neuroethology of weakly electric fish, as well as other social, communicating animals in which extensive recordings from multiple individuals, and thus traditional data-driven modeling, are infeasible.

Raaghav Malik, Satpreet H. Singh, Sonja Johnson-Yu et al.

Larval zebrafish hunting provides a tractable setting to study how ecological and energetic constraints shape adaptive behavior in both biological brains and artificial agents. Here we develop a minimal agent-based model, training recurrent policies with deep reinforcement learning in a bout-based zebrafish simulator. Despite its simplicity, the model reproduces hallmark hunting behaviors -- including eye vergence-linked pursuit, speed modulation, and stereotyped approach trajectories -- that closely match real larval zebrafish. Quantitative trajectory analyses show that pursuit bouts systematically reduce prey angle by roughly half before strike, consistent with measurements. Virtual experiments and parameter sweeps vary ecological and energetic constraints, bout kinematics (coupled vs. uncoupled turns and forward motion), and environmental factors such as food density, food speed, and vergence limits. These manipulations reveal how constraints and environments shape pursuit dynamics, strike success, and abort rates, yielding falsifiable predictions for neuroscience experiments. These sweeps identify a compact set of constraints -- binocular sensing, the coupling of forward speed and turning in bout kinematics, and modest energetic costs on locomotion and vergence -- that are sufficient for zebrafish-like hunting to emerge. Strikingly, these behaviors arise in minimal agents without detailed biomechanics, fluid dynamics, circuit realism, or imitation learning from real zebrafish data. Taken together, this work provides a normative account of zebrafish hunting as the optimal balance between energetic cost and sensory benefit, highlighting the trade-offs that structure vergence and trajectory dynamics. We establish a virtual lab that narrows the experimental search space and generates falsifiable predictions about behavior and neural coding.

Satpreet H. Singh

We present a novel game-theoretic formulation of Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NNMF), a popular data-analysis method with many scientific and engineering applications. The game-theoretic formulation is shown to have favorable scaling and parallelization properties, while retaining reconstruction and convergence performance comparable to the traditional Multiplicative Updates algorithm.

Satpreet H. Singh, Steven M. Peterson, Rajesh P. N. Rao et al.

Recent technological advances in brain recording and artificial intelligence are propelling a new paradigm in neuroscience beyond the traditional controlled experiment. Rather than focusing on cued, repeated trials, naturalistic neuroscience studies neural processes underlying spontaneous behaviors performed in unconstrained settings. However, analyzing such unstructured data lacking a priori experimental design remains a significant challenge, especially when the data is multi-modal and long-term. Here we describe an automated approach for analyzing simultaneously recorded long-term, naturalistic electrocorticography (ECoG) and naturalistic behavior video data. We take a behavior-first approach to analyzing the long-term recordings. Using a combination of computer vision, discrete latent-variable modeling, and string pattern-matching on the behavioral video data, we find and annotate spontaneous human upper-limb movement events. We show results from our approach applied to data collected for 12 human subjects over 7--9 days for each subject. Our pipeline discovers and annotates over 40,000 instances of naturalistic human upper-limb movement events in the behavioral videos. Analysis of the simultaneously recorded brain data reveals neural signatures of movement that corroborate prior findings from traditional controlled experiments. We also prototype a decoder for a movement initiation detection task to demonstrate the efficacy of our pipeline as a source of training data for brain-computer interfacing applications. Our work addresses the unique data analysis challenges in studying naturalistic human behaviors, and contributes methods that may generalize to other neural recording modalities beyond ECoG. We publicly release our curated dataset, providing a resource to study naturalistic neural and behavioral variability at a scale not previously available.