Recent multi-agent extensions of Q-Learning require knowledge of other agents' payoffs and Q-functions, and assume game-theoretic play at all times by all other agents. This paper proposes a fundamentally different approach, dubbed "Hyper-Q" Learning, in which values of mixed strategies rather than base actions are learned, and in which other agents' strategies are estimated from observed actions via Bayesian inference. Hyper-Q may be effective against many different types of adaptive agents, even if they are persistently dynamic. Against certain broad categories of adaptation, it is argued that Hyper-Q may converge to exact optimal time-varying policies. In tests using Rock-Paper-Scissors, Hyper-Q learns to significantly exploit an Infinitesimal Gradient Ascent (IGA) player, as well as a Policy Hill Climber (PHC) player. Preliminary analysis of Hyper-Q against itself is also presented.

We describe a new approximation algorithm for solving partially observable MDPs. Our bounded policy iteration approach searches through the space of bounded-size, stochastic finite state controllers, combining several advantages of gradient ascent (efficiency, search through restricted controller space) and policy iteration (less vulnerability to local optima).

We exploit some useful properties of Gaussian process (GP) regression models for reinforcement learning in continuous state spaces and discrete time. We demonstrate how the GP model allows evaluation of the value function in closed form. The resulting policy iteration algorithm is demonstrated on a simple problem with a two dimensional state space. Further, we speculate that the intrinsic ability of GP models to characterise distributions of functions would allow the method to capture entire distributions over future values instead of merely their expectation, which has traditionally been the focus of much of reinforcement learning.

We describe a system that localizes a single dipole to reasonable accuracy from noisy magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measurements in real time. At its core is a multilayer perceptron (MLP) trained to map sensor signals and head position to dipole location. Including head position overcomes the previous need to retrain the MLP for each subject and session. The training dataset was generated by mapping randomly chosen dipoles and head positions through an analytic model and adding noise from real MEG recordings. After training, a localization took 0.7 ms with an average error of 0.90 cm. A few iterations of a Levenberg-Marquardt routine using the MLP's output as its initial guess took 15 ms and improved the accuracy to 0.53 cm, only slightly above the statistical limits on accuracy imposed by the noise. We applied these methods to localize single dipole sources from MEG components isolated by blind source separation and compared the estimated locations to those generated by standard manually-assisted commercial software.

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) are an interesting emerging technology that is driven by the motivation to develop an effective communication interface translating human intentions into a control signal for devices like computers or neuroprostheses. If this can be done bypassing the usual human output pathways like peripheral nerves and muscles it can ultimately become a valuable tool for paralyzed patients.

Nonlinear filtering can solve very complex problems, but typically involve very time consuming calculations. Here we show that for filters that are constructed as a RBF network with Gaussian basis functions, a decomposition into linear filters exists, which can be computed efficiently in the frequency domain, yielding dramatic improvement in speed. We present an application of this idea to image processing. In electron micrograph images of photoreceptor terminals of the fruit fly, Drosophila, synaptic vesicles containing neurotransmitter should be detected and labeled automatically. We use hand labels, provided by human experts, to learn a RBF filter using Support Vector Regression with Gaussian kernels. We will show that the resulting nonlinear filter solves the task to a degree of accuracy, which is close to what can be achieved by human experts. This allows the very time consuming task of data evaluation to be done efficiently.

We consider learning to classify cognitive states of human subjects, based on their brain activity observed via functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). This problem is important because such classifiers constitute "virtual sensors" of hidden cognitive states, which may be useful in cognitive science research and clinical applications. In recent work, Mitchell, et al. [6,7,9] have demonstrated the feasibility of training such classifiers for individual human subjects (e.g., to distinguish whether the subject is reading an ambiguous or unambiguous sentence, or whether they are reading a noun or a verb). Here we extend that line of research, exploring how to train classifiers that can be applied across multiple human subjects, including subjects who were not involved in training the classifier. We describe the design of several machine learning approaches to training multiple-subject classifiers, and report experimental results demonstrating the success of these methods in learning cross-subject classifiers for two different fMRI data sets.

We propose an unsupervised methodology using independent component analysis (ICA) to cluster genes from DNA microarray data. Based on an ICA mixture model of genomic expression patterns, linear and nonlinear ICA finds components that are specific to certain biological processes. Genes that exhibit significant up-regulation or down-regulation within each component are grouped into clusters. We test the statistical significance of enrichment of gene annotations within each cluster. ICA-based clustering outperformed other leading methods in constructing functionally coherent clusters on various datasets. This result supports our model of genomic expression data as composite effect of independent biological processes. Comparison of clustering performance among various ICA algorithms including a kernel-based nonlinear ICA algorithm shows that nonlinear ICA performed the best for small datasets and natural-gradient maximization-likelihood worked well for all the datasets.

We examine the use of hidden Markov and hidden semi-Markov models for automatically segmenting an electrocardiogram waveform into its constituent waveform features. An undecimated wavelet transform is used to generate an overcomplete representation of the signal that is more appropriate for subsequent modelling. We show that the state durations implicit in a standard hidden Markov model are ill-suited to those of real ECG features, and we investigate the use of hidden semi-Markov models for improved state duration modelling.

A key issue in supervised protein classification is the representation of input sequences of amino acids. Recent work using string kernels for protein data has achieved state-of-the-art classification performance. However, such representations are based only on labeled data -- examples with known 3D structures, organized into structural classes -- while in practice, unlabeled data is far more plentiful. In this work, we develop simple and scalable cluster kernel techniques for incorporating unlabeled data into the representation of protein sequences. We show that our methods greatly improve the classification performance of string kernels and outperform standard approaches for using unlabeled data, such as adding close homologs of the positive examples to the training data. We achieve equal or superior performance to previously presented cluster kernel methods while achieving far greater computational efficiency.