Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: Efficient and robust multi-task learning in the brain with modular task
  primitives   In a real-world setting biological agents do not have infinite resources to
learn new things. It is thus useful to recycle previously acquired knowledge in
a way that allows for faster, less resource-intensive acquisition of multiple
new skills. Neural networks in the brain are likely not entirely re-trained
with new tasks, but how they leverage existing computations to learn new tasks
is not well understood. In this work, we study this question in artificial
neural networks trained on commonly used neuroscience paradigms. Building on
recent work from the multi-task learning literature, we propose two
ingredients: (1) network modularity, and (2) learning task primitives.
Together, these ingredients form inductive biases we call structural and
functional, respectively. Using a corpus of nine different tasks, we show that
a modular network endowed with task primitives allows for learning multiple
tasks well while keeping parameter counts, and updates, low. We also show that
the skills acquired with our approach are more robust to a broad range of
perturbations compared to those acquired with other multi-task learning
strategies. This work offers a new perspective on achieving efficient
multi-task learning in the brain, and makes predictions for novel neuroscience
experiments in which targeted perturbations are employed to explore solution
spaces.

28
The categories of this paper are: alg-geom
9
The categories of this paper are: nlin
6
The categories of this paper are: astro-ph
14
The categories of this paper are: math-ph
7
The categories of this paper are: hep-th
24
The categories of this paper are: dg-ga
0
The categories of this paper are: hep-ph
15
The categories of this paper are: nucl-ex
11
The categories of this paper are: hep-lat
18
The categories of this paper are: econ
26
The categories of this paper are: bayes-an
32
The categories of this paper are: atom-ph
33
The categories of this paper are: plasm-ph
20
The categories of this paper are: acc-phys
34
The categories of this paper are: chem-ph
29
The categories of this paper are: funct-an