Parsing neural dynamics with infinite recurrent switching linear dynamical systems

Unsupervised methods for dimensionality reduction of neural activity and behavior have provided unprecedented insights into the underpinnings of neural information processing. One popular approach involves the recurrent switching linear dynamical system (rSLDS) model, which describes the latent dynamics of neural spike train data using discrete switches between a finite number of low-dimensional linear dynamical systems. However, a few properties of rSLDS model limit its deployability on trial-varying data, such as a fixed number of states over trials, and no latent structure or organization of states. Here we overcome these limitations by endowing the rSLDS model with a semi-Markov discrete state process, with latent geometry, that captures key properties of stochastic processes over partitions with flexible state cardinality. We leverage partial differential equations (PDE) theory to derive an efficient, semi-parametric formulation for dynamical sufficient statistics to the discrete states. This process, combined with switching dynamics, defines our infinite recurrent switching linear dynamical system (irSLDS) model class. We first validate and demonstrate the capabilities of our model on synthetic data. Next, we turn to the analysis of mice electrophysiological data during decision-making, and uncover strong non-stationary processes underlying both within-trial and trial-averaged neural activity.