Accretion - Finding Neuronal Assemblies

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Description

A program to execute the Accretion algorithm ([Gerstein et al. 1978], see below) on neural spike train data. Since the Accretion algorithm is closely related to frequent item set mining, the program uses the terminology of this area. That is, the program refers to items rather than neurons and to transactions rather than time bins.

Scripts to convert the input from GDF format (two column format consisting of time stamp and neuron id) to the needed transaction format can be found in the directory accretion/ex in the source package.

The implementation uses an Eclat-based scheme to determine the needed support counters, but prunes the search mainly with the results of statistical tests. (Compare the additional evaluation measures for the Apriori program.)

Note that due to the processing scheme of the Accretion algorithm the output may contain the same set of items/neurons multiple times with the same or different statistical tests results. This is not a bug of the program, but a drawback of the Accretion algorithm.

Reference for the Accretion algorithm:

• Identification of Functionally Related Neural Assemblies
  G.L. Gerstein, D.H. Perkel and K.N. Subramanian
  Brain Research 140(1):43--62
  Elsevier, Amsterdam, Netherlands 1978