Cited by 9Functional Brain Connectivity StudiesNeural dynamics and brain functionComplex Systems and Dynamics

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 119 of the 119 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 52 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Sampling bias corrections for discrete and Gaussian partial information decompositions

Open access

Abstract

Partial information decomposition (PID) has emerged as a principled way to decompose the information carried by neural activity into components identifying whether interactions among neurons or brain areas generate synergistic or redundant information. Here, we demonstrate that empirical measures of synergy and redundancy based on either Gaussian or discrete probability estimators suffer from a substantial limited-sampling estimation bias. This bias is much larger for synergy than for redundancy. The gap between them increases with the number of parameters specifying the probability distributions. We develop procedures that effectively correct for the bias and provide rules of thumb for the sample sizes required to obtain unbiased estimates. We show that, when used on empirical brain datasets, they successfully remove large synergy biases across species, recording modalities, and experimental designs. Our bias corrections extend the range of neuroscience questions and experimental designs addressable with PID and allow accurate comparisons between synergy and redundancy.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

Partial information decomposition (PID) estimates of synergy and redundancy from discrete or Gaussian probability estimators carry a substantial limited-sampling bias, and this bias is much larger for synergy than for redundancy. The authors develop bias-correction procedures and sample-size rules of thumb, then validate them on simulations and five empirical neural datasets.

Key findings

  • Plugin estimates of joint information, synergy, and redundancy are upward biased; for tens of samples the bias can be as large as or larger than the target quantities. Discrete synergy bias scales approximately as \((S \times R^2)/N\), whereas redundancy bias grows at most as \((S \times R)/N\); Gaussian synergy bias grows faster with source/target dimension \(d\) than redundancy bias.
  • The recommended merged correction combines two corrections with opposite residual-error tendencies. The sufficient-sampling regimes are \(N > 4 \times S \times R^2\) for discrete PID and \(N > 12d\) (or \(d < N/12\)) for Gaussian PID. The prior Venkatesh correction left residual errors as large as 30%–40% of the true joint information value.
  • In real spiking datasets, uncorrected joint information was biased upward by ≈30%–50%, redundancy was almost unbiased, and synergy bias differences were approximately 60%, 200%, and 800% of target values across three datasets. In one dataset, uncorrected estimates would have wrongly concluded synergy > redundancy, whereas corrected estimates found redundancy higher.
  • For human fMRI with \(d = 20\) ROIs and 256 time points, synergy bias was ≈35% of the target value and redundancy bias ≈10%, both well corrected. In MEG, corrections removed spurious pre-stimulus information; post-stimulus discrete bias subtraction was 146% for joint information and 1,669% for synergy, after which synergy and redundancy were small and non-significant. Three-source PID showed three-way synergy bias far larger than three-way redundancy, with a larger gap than for two-source PID.

Methods

  • Simulations generated discrete spike-count and Gaussian processes with known ground-truth PID components, varying number of samples \(N\), discrete bins \(R,S\), Gaussian dimension \(d\), and information level. Bias was computed as the average empirical estimate minus ground truth, typically over 100 simulations, with mean ± 3 SEM.
  • Bias corrections included quadratic extrapolation (QE), shuffle subtraction, resampling, and a merged weighted correction. For discrete PID, QE fits a \(1/N\) polynomial using half and quarter data; shuffle subtraction permutes target values; merged combines QE and shuffle. For Gaussian PID, resampling replaces QE, and merged combines resampling and shuffle.
  • Empirical validation used five previously published datasets: mouse A1 two-photon calcium imaging (\(n = 6,209\) pairs, mean 140 trials), mouse CA1 calcium imaging (\(n = 36,158\) pairs, 870 trials), monkey A1 electrophysiology (\(n = 83\) pairs, 108 trials), human HCP resting-state fMRI (\(n = 100\) participants, 256 time points, \(d = 20\) ROIs), and human MEG (\(n = 30\) participants, 519–864 trials). Analyses used discrete BROJA PID, Gaussian gPID, or three-source MMI PID.

Limitations

  • Stated: the authors tested BROJA, Imin, and IMMI PIDs but say other PIDs, including continuous non-Gaussian distributions, should be tested. They also state that the bias-correction procedures are heuristic and lack theoretical guarantees for the sign of residual errors.
  • Stated: for cellular spiking activity, they tested pairs and triplets of neural units but did not systematically test large populations; scaling up would require coupling with dimensionality-reduction techniques. They also note that combining bias-correction and compensatory procedures remains to be explored.
  • Evident from the text: three-source analyses used MMI because discrete BROJA and Gaussian gPID are not defined for more than two sources, so the three-source bias results do not cover those PID definitions.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.patter.2026.101619

Cites

119 of 119 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

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Verification

Claims the paper makes

80 Own result · 37 Own interpretation · 32 No basis given · 24 Check pending · 9 Own method · 6 No full text of the sources · 1 Sources not found

Verify all 38 references — free account

Show all 93 claims

  • It may state two separate claims as one. 81
  • Probably not a substantial claim. 20
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 1
96 of 96
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    Shuffle subtraction assumes implicitly that the bias has similar magnitude across information levels.

    “This approach, which has been employed in the mutual information literature with numerous variations of how to destroy information by data randomization,27,79,82 assumes implicitly that the bias has similar magnitude across information levels (an assumption that we will investigate below).”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Other PIDs such as Imin and IMMI have been defined for, and can be readily applied to, more than two sources.

    “other PIDs such as Imin and IMMI have been defined for, and can be readily applied to, more than two sources.”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    The QE procedure assumes the asymptotic sampling regime N × p(s,r1,r2) ≫ 1 for all s,r1,r2, so that the bias of entropies, information, and PID terms can be accurately approximated as a second-order expansion in 1/N.

    “The QE procedure60 assumes we are in the asymptotic sampling regime N × p(s,r1,r2) ≫ 1 for all s,r1,r2, so that the bias of the entropies, information, and PID terms can be accurately approximated as a second-order expansion in 1/N.”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    Synergy depends on the full joint distributions and redundancy depends on the marginal but not the full joint distributions.

    “Because our analytical considerations predicting a higher bias for synergy than redundancy are based on the assumption that the synergy depends on the full joint distributions and the redundancy depends on the marginal but not the full joint distributions”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    Information measures from similar distributions suffer from similar biases.

    “The resampling method for bias correction is grounded on the assumption that information measures from similar distributions suffer from similar biases.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The parameters chosen for individual figure panels are representative of wider trends and within the range found in real-data analyses of neuroscience experiments.

    “The parameters used in individual figure panels were chosen with the criteria that these parameters were representative of wider trends, were within the range in our experience found in real-data analyses of neuroscience experiments, and illustrate well the point of interest.”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    The Gaussian PID requires that the target-source distributions are approximately Gaussian.

    “The Gaussian PID assumes that the target-source distributions are approximately Gaussian.”
7 of 7

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

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1 of 1

Citations

Cites

Show all 119 references

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Gabrié, 2018, Entropy and mutual information in models of deep neural networks, Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst., 31, 1826

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Metadata

Authors
Lorenz, G. M., Engel, N. M., Koçillari, L., Celotto, M., Orsenigo, D., Curreli, S., Malerba, S. B., Engel, A. K., Kayser, C., Fellin, T., Luppi, A. I., & Panzeri, S.
Affiliations
  • University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (DE)
  • University of Turin (IT)
  • Italian Institute of Technology (IT)
  • Bielefeld University (DE)
  • University of Cambridge (GB)
Corresponding author
Panzeri, Stefano
Venue
Patterns
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2026-09
Volume
7
Issue
9
Pages
101619
ISSN
2666-3899 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W7170149077
Cited by
9
References
119
Citations by year
2026: 4
FWCI
9.28
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Patterns (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • Apollo (University of Cambridge) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld (Universität Bielefeld) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • Wellcome Trust
  • Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative
  • EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural dynamics and brain function
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Complex Systems and Dynamics
Keywords
partial information decomposition, sampling bias, bias correction, synergistic effect, redundancy, unique information, neural coding, discrete distributions, neural spiking activity, auditory cortex, posterior parietal cortex, hippocampus

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Sampling bias corrections for discrete and Gaussian partial information decompositions. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.patter.2026.101619
The paper
Lorenz, G. M., Engel, N. M., Koçillari, L., Celotto, M., Orsenigo, D., Curreli, S., Malerba, S. B., Engel, A. K., Kayser, C., Fellin, T., Luppi, A. I., & Panzeri, S. (2026). Sampling bias corrections for discrete and Gaussian partial information decompositions. Patterns. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2026.101619