Guillaume Lajoie

Biographie

Guillaume Lajoie est professeur agrégé au Département de mathématiques et de statistiques (DMS) de l'Université de Montréal et membre académique principal de Mila – Institut québécois d’intelligence artificielle. Il est titulaire d'une chaire CIFAR (CCAI Canada) ainsi que d'une chaire de recherche du Canada (CRC) en calcul et interfaçage neuronaux.

Ses recherches sont positionnées à l'intersection de l'IA et des neurosciences où il développe des outils pour mieux comprendre les mécanismes d'intelligence communs aux systèmes biologiques et artificiels. Les contributions de son groupe de recherche vont des progrès des paradigmes d'apprentissage à plusieurs échelles pour les grands systèmes artificiels aux applications en neurotechnologie. Dr. Lajoie participe activement aux efforts de développement responsables de l'IA, cherchant à identifier les lignes directrices et les meilleures pratiques pour l'utilisation de l'IA dans la recherche et au-delà.

Étudiants actuels

Federico Arangath Joseph

Collaborateur·rice de recherche - ETH Zurich

Rohan Banerjee

Collaborateur·rice alumni - Polytechnique

Doctorat - UdeM

Co-superviseur⋅e :

Hugo Larochelle

Colin Bredenberg

Postdoctorat - UdeM

Co-superviseur⋅e :

Blake Richards

Leo Choiniere

Doctorat - UdeM

Eric Elmoznino

Doctorat - UdeM

Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :

Leo Gagnon

Doctorat - UdeM

Tom George

Postdoctorat - McGill

Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :

Juan Guerra

Maîtrise recherche - Polytechnique

Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :

Nanda Harishankar Krishna

Doctorat - UdeM

Site web

Anna Jahn

Visiteur de recherche indépendant - McGill

Chen Jiang

Doctorat - McGill

Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :

Paul Masset

Thomas Jiralerspong

Doctorat - UdeM

Co-superviseur⋅e :

Maîtrise recherche - UdeM

Co-superviseur⋅e :

Doctorat - McGill

Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :

Blake Richards

Mathys Loiselle

Stagiaire de recherche - Concordia

Co-superviseur⋅e :

Ximeng Mao

Doctorat - UdeM

Co-superviseur⋅e :

Abdel Mfougouon Njupoun

Doctorat - UdeM

Co-superviseur⋅e :

Doctorat - UdeM

Co-superviseur⋅e :

Visiteur de recherche indépendant - UdeM

Julia Price

Maîtrise recherche - UdeM

Mauricio Rivera

Maîtrise recherche - UdeM

Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :

Marco Bonizzato

Avery Ryoo

Doctorat - UdeM

Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :

Doctorat - UdeM

Co-superviseur⋅e :

Lune Bellec

Ryan Vogt

Postdoctorat - UdeM

Doctorat - UdeM

Jieyu Zhao

Visiteur de recherche indépendant - University of South California

Site web

Apprentissage automatique pour la segmentation des différentes activations des fibres nerveuses à partir des signaux neuronaux du cerveau vers le corps

Billets de blogue

Représentation graphique d'un nerf vague

21 mai 2025

par

Param Raval

Olivier Tessier-Larivière

Pascal Fortier-Poisson

Blake Richards

Guillaume Lajoie

Lire l'article

13 juin 2024

Que nous apprennent les distributions des coefficients synaptiques au sujet de l’apprentissage dans le cerveau ?

par

Roman Pogodin

Jonathan Cornford

Arna Ghosh

Gauthier Gidel

Guillaume Lajoie

Blake Richards

Lire l'article

Publications

Gaussian-process-based Bayesian optimization for neurostimulation interventions in rats

Leo Choiniere

Rose Guay-Hottin

Rémi Picard

Marco Bonizzato

Numa Dancause

2024-02-29

STAR Protocols (publié)

Connectome-based reservoir computing with the conn2res toolbox

Laura E. Suárez

Agoston Mihalik

Filip Milisav

Kenji Marshall

Mingze Li

Petra E. Vértes

Bratislav Misic

Brain connectivity patterns shape computational capacity of biological neural networks, however mapping empirically measured connectivity to… (voir plus) artificial networks remains challenging. The authors present a toolbox for implementing biological neural networks as artificial reservoir networks. The toolbox allows for a variety of empirical/measured connectomes and is equipped with various dynamical systems, and cognitive tasks. The connection patterns of neural circuits form a complex network. How signaling in these circuits manifests as complex cognition and adaptive behaviour remains the central question in neuroscience. Concomitant advances in connectomics and artificial intelligence open fundamentally new opportunities to understand how connection patterns shape computational capacity in biological brain networks. Reservoir computing is a versatile paradigm that uses high-dimensional, nonlinear dynamical systems to perform computations and approximate cognitive functions. Here we present conn2res : an open-source Python toolbox for implementing biological neural networks as artificial neural networks. conn2res is modular, allowing arbitrary network architecture and dynamics to be imposed. The toolbox allows researchers to input connectomes reconstructed using multiple techniques, from tract tracing to noninvasive diffusion imaging, and to impose multiple dynamical systems, from spiking neurons to memristive dynamics. The versatility of the conn2res toolbox allows us to ask new questions at the confluence of neuroscience and artificial intelligence. By reconceptualizing function as computation, conn2res sets the stage for a more mechanistic understanding of structure-function relationships in brain networks.

2024-01-21

Nature Communications (publié)

Amortizing Intractable Inference in Large Language Models

Edward J. Hu

Nikolay Malkin

Autoregressive large language models (LLMs) compress knowledge from their training data through next-token conditional distributions. This l… (voir plus)imits tractable querying of this knowledge to start-to-end autoregressive sampling. However, many tasks of interest -- including sequence continuation, infilling, and other forms of constrained generation -- involve sampling from intractable posterior distributions. We address this limitation by using amortized Bayesian inference to sample from these intractable posteriors. Such amortization is algorithmically achieved by fine-tuning LLMs via diversity-seeking reinforcement learning algorithms: generative flow networks (GFlowNets). We empirically demonstrate that this distribution-matching paradigm of LLM fine-tuning can serve as an effective alternative to maximum-likelihood training and reward-maximizing policy optimization. As an important application, we interpret chain-of-thought reasoning as a latent variable modeling problem and demonstrate that our approach enables data-efficient adaptation of LLMs to tasks that require multi-step rationalization and tool use.

2024-01-15

ICLR.cc/2024/Conference (présentation orale)

Delta-AI: Local Objectives for Amortized Inference in Sparse Graphical Models

Jean-Pierre Falet

Hae Beom Lee

Nikolay Malkin

Chen Sun

We present a new algorithm for amortized inference in sparse probabilistic graphical models (PGMs), which we call …

2024-01-15

ICLR.cc/2024/Conference (poster)

How Connectivity Structure Shapes Rich and Lazy Learning in Neural Circuits

Yuhan Helena Liu

Aristide Baratin

Jonathan Cornford

Stefan Mihalas

Eric Shea-Brown

In theoretical neuroscience, recent work leverages deep learning tools to explore how some network attributes critically influence its learn… (voir plus)ing dynamics. Notably, initial weight distributions with small (resp. large) variance may yield a rich (resp. lazy) regime, where significant (resp. minor) changes to network states and representation are observed over the course of learning. However, in biology, neural circuit connectivity could exhibit a low-rank structure and therefore differs markedly from the random initializations generally used for these studies. As such, here we investigate how the structure of the initial weights -- in particular their effective rank -- influences the network learning regime. Through both empirical and theoretical analyses, we discover that high-rank initializations typically yield smaller network changes indicative of lazier learning, a finding we also confirm with experimentally-driven initial connectivity in recurrent neural networks. Conversely, low-rank initialization biases learning towards richer learning. Importantly, however, as an exception to this rule, we find lazier learning can still occur with a low-rank initialization that aligns with task and data statistics. Our research highlights the pivotal role of initial weight structures in shaping learning regimes, with implications for metabolic costs of plasticity and risks of catastrophic forgetting.

2024-01-15

ICLR.cc/2024/Conference (poster)

Leveraging Unpaired Data for Vision-Language Generative Models via Cycle Consistency

Tianhong Li

Sangnie Bhardwaj

Yonglong Tian

Han Zhang

Jarred Barber

Dina Katabi

Huiwen Chang

Dilip Krishnan

Current vision-language generative models rely on expansive corpora of paired image-text data to attain optimal performance and generalizati… (voir plus)on capabilities. However, automatically collecting such data (e.g. via large-scale web scraping) leads to low quality and poor image-text correlation, while human annotation is more accurate but requires significant manual effort and expense. We introduce

2024-01-15

ICLR.cc/2024/Conference (spotlight)

Sufficient Conditions for Offline Reactivation in Recurrent Neural Networks

Nanda H Krishna

Colin Bredenberg

Daniel Levenstein

Blake Aaron Richards

During periods of quiescence, such as sleep, neural activity in many brain circuits resembles that observed during periods of task engagemen… (voir plus)t. However, the precise conditions under which task-optimized networks can autonomously reactivate the same network states responsible for online behavior is poorly understood. In this study, we develop a mathematical framework that outlines sufficient conditions for the emergence of neural reactivation in circuits that encode features of smoothly varying stimuli. We demonstrate mathematically that noisy recurrent networks optimized to track environmental state variables using change-based sensory information naturally develop denoising dynamics, which, in the absence of input, cause the network to revisit state configurations observed during periods of online activity. We validate our findings using numerical experiments on two canonical neuroscience tasks: spatial position estimation based on self-motion cues, and head direction estimation based on angular velocity cues. Overall, our work provides theoretical support for modeling offline reactivation as an emergent consequence of task optimization in noisy neural circuits.

2024-01-15

International Conference on Learning Representations (poster)

Synaptic Weight Distributions Depend on the Geometry of Plasticity

Blake Aaron Richards

A growing literature in computational neuroscience leverages gradient descent and learning algorithms that approximate it to study synaptic … (voir plus)plasticity in the brain. However, the vast majority of this work ignores a critical underlying assumption: the choice of distance for synaptic changes - i.e. the geometry of synaptic plasticity. Gradient descent assumes that the distance is Euclidean, but many other distances are possible, and there is no reason that biology necessarily uses Euclidean geometry. Here, using the theoretical tools provided by mirror descent, we show that the distribution of synaptic weights will depend on the geometry of synaptic plasticity. We use these results to show that experimentally-observed log-normal weight distributions found in several brain areas are not consistent with standard gradient descent (i.e. a Euclidean geometry), but rather with non-Euclidean distances. Finally, we show that it should be possible to experimentally test for different synaptic geometries by comparing synaptic weight distributions before and after learning. Overall, our work shows that the current paradigm in theoretical work on synaptic plasticity that assumes Euclidean synaptic geometry may be misguided and that it should be possible to experimentally determine the true geometry of synaptic plasticity in the brain.

2024-01-15

ICLR.cc/2024/Conference (spotlight)

Personalized inference for neurostimulation with meta-learning: a case study of vagus nerve stimulation

Ximeng Mao

Yao-Chuan Chang

Stavros Zanos

2024-01-11

Journal of Neural Engineering (publié)

A benchmark of individual auto-regressive models in a massive fMRI dataset

François Paugam

Basile Pinsard

Pierre Bellec

Dense functional magnetic resonance imaging datasets open new avenues to create auto-regressive models of brain activity. Individual idiosyn… (voir plus)crasies are obscured by group models, but can be captured by purely individual models given sufficient amounts of training data. In this study, we compared several deep and shallow individual models on the temporal auto-regression of BOLD time-series recorded during a natural video-watching task. The best performing models were then analyzed in terms of their data requirements and scaling, subject specificity, and the space-time structure of their predicted dynamics. We found the Chebnets, a type of graph convolutional neural network, to be best suited for temporal BOLD auto-regression, closely followed by linear models. Chebnets demonstrated an increase in performance with increasing amounts of data, with no complete saturation at 9 h of training data. Good generalization to other kinds of video stimuli and to resting-state data marked the Chebnets’ ability to capture intrinsic brain dynamics rather than only stimulus-specific autocorrelation patterns. Significant subject specificity was found at short prediction time lags. The Chebnets were found to capture lower frequencies at longer prediction time lags, and the spatial correlations in predicted dynamics were found to match traditional functional connectivity networks. Overall, these results demonstrate that large individual functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) datasets can be used to efficiently train purely individual auto-regressive models of brain activity, and that massive amounts of individual data are required to do so. The excellent performance of the Chebnets likely reflects their ability to combine spatial and temporal interactions on large time scales at a low complexity cost. The non-linearities of the models did not appear as a key advantage. In fact, surprisingly, linear versions of the Chebnets appeared to outperform the original non-linear ones. Individual temporal auto-regressive models have the potential to improve the predictability of the BOLD signal. This study is based on a massive, publicly-available dataset, which can serve for future benchmarks of individual auto-regressive modeling.

2023-12-31

Imaging Neuroscience (publié)

A Unified, Scalable Framework for Neural Population Decoding

Mehdi Azabou

Vinam Arora

Venkataramana Ganesh

Ximeng Mao

Santosh Nachimuthu

Michael J. Mendelson

Blake Richards

Matthew G. Perich

Eva L. Dyer

Our ability to use deep learning approaches to decipher neural activity would likely benefit from greater scale, in terms of both model size… (voir plus) and datasets. However, the integration of many neural recordings into one unified model is challenging, as each recording contains the activity of different neurons from different individual animals. In this paper, we introduce a training framework and architecture designed to model the population dynamics of neural activity across diverse, large-scale neural recordings. Our method first tokenizes individual spikes within the dataset to build an efficient representation of neural events that captures the fine temporal structure of neural activity. We then employ cross-attention and a PerceiverIO backbone to further construct a latent tokenization of neural population activities. Utilizing this architecture and training framework, we construct a large-scale multi-session model trained on large datasets from seven nonhuman primates, spanning over 158 different sessions of recording from over 27,373 neural units and over 100 hours of recordings. In a number of different tasks, we demonstrate that our pretrained model can be rapidly adapted to new, unseen sessions with unspecified neuron correspondence, enabling few-shot performance with minimal labels. This work presents a powerful new approach for building deep learning tools to analyze neural data and stakes out a clear path to training at scale.

2023-12-11

Neural Information Processing Systems (Accept (poster))

Large language models: What could they do for neurology?

2023-11-30

Journal of the Neurological Sciences (publié)