PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Benjamin James Lansdell
AU  - Konrad Paul Kording
TI  - Spiking allows neurons to estimate their causal effect
AID  - 10.1101/253351
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 253351
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/01/25/253351.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/01/25/253351.full
AB  - Learning aims at causing better performance and the typical gradient descent learning is an approximate causal estimator. However real neurons spike, making their gradients undefined. Interestingly, a popular technique in economics, regression discontinuity design, estimates causal effects using such discontinuities. Here we show how the spiking threshold can reveal the influence of a neuron’s activity on the performance, indicating a deep link between simple learning rules and economics-style causal inference.