VBA: a probabilistic treatment of nonlinear models for neurobiological and behavioural data.

This work is in line with an on-going effort tending toward a computational (quantitative and refutable) understanding of human neuro-cognitive processes. Many sophisticated models for behavioural and neurobiological data have flourished during the past decade. Most of these models are partly unspec...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jean Daunizeau, Vincent Adam, Lionel Rigoux
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2014-01-01
Series:PLoS Computational Biology
Online Access:http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3900378?pdf=render
Description
Summary:This work is in line with an on-going effort tending toward a computational (quantitative and refutable) understanding of human neuro-cognitive processes. Many sophisticated models for behavioural and neurobiological data have flourished during the past decade. Most of these models are partly unspecified (i.e. they have unknown parameters) and nonlinear. This makes them difficult to peer with a formal statistical data analysis framework. In turn, this compromises the reproducibility of model-based empirical studies. This work exposes a software toolbox that provides generic, efficient and robust probabilistic solutions to the three problems of model-based analysis of empirical data: (i) data simulation, (ii) parameter estimation/model selection, and (iii) experimental design optimization.
ISSN:1553-734X
1553-7358