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The Partial Information Decomposition of Generative Neural Network Models
Abstract
In this work we study the distributed representations learnt by generative neural network models. In particular, we investigate the properties of redundant and synergistic information that groups of hidden neurons contain about the target variable. To this end, we use an emerging branch of information theory called partial information decomposition (PID) and track the informational properties of the neurons through training. We find two differentiated phases during the training process: a first short phase in which the neurons learn redundant information about the target, and a second phase in which neurons start specialising and each of them learns unique information about the target. We also find that in smaller networks individual neurons learn more specific information about certain features of the input, suggesting that learning pressure can encourage disentangled representations.
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![Figure 1 Graphical representation of the discriminative restricted Boltzmann machine (DRBM) and its components. Vectors x and y correspond to the training input and label, respectively, h is the activation of the hidden neurons, and U and W are the weight matrices to be learned. (Adapted from [23]).](/paper-figures/b45c23ab4ed94ff8b86ba989a38b8e95/the-partial-information-decomposition-of-generative-neural-network-models-figure-1.png)





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“our work could be readily applied more widely, as PID using the discrete or Gaussian estimators studied here are often employed in real-data analyses in non-neuroscience fields”
From Sampling bias corrections for discrete and Gaussian partial information decompositions (2026) · cites this paper as [102]
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Building machines that learn and think like people
Lake, B. M., Ullman, T. D., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Gershman, S. J. (2017) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x16001837 · Cited by 2,550
Keeping the neural networks simple by minimizing the description length of the weights
Hinton, G. E., & van Camp, D. (1993) · Proceedings of the sixth annual conference on Computational learning theory - COLT '93 · doi:10.1145/168304.168306 · Cited by 994
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Sampling bias corrections for discrete and Gaussian partial information decompositions
Lorenz, G. M., Engel, N. M., Koçillari, L., Celotto, M., Orsenigo, D., Curreli, S., Malerba, S. B., Engel, A. K., Kayser, C., Fellin, T., et al. (2026) · Patterns · doi:10.1016/j.patter.2026.101619 · Cited by 9
Metadata
- Authors
- Tax, T., Mediano, P., & Shanahan, M.
- Affiliations
- Corti, Nørrebrogade 45E 2, 2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark
- Department of Computing, Imperial College London, London SW7 2RH, UK
- Venue
- Entropy
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2017-09-06
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 474
- ISSN
- 1099-4300
- Cited by
- 55
- References
- 2
- Language
- en
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