Journal Article

Quantifying influence of human choice on the automated detection of Drosophila behavior by a supervised machine learning algorithm

Asahina, Kenta, Leng, Xubo, Nayak, Pavan, Ishii, Kenichi, Wohl, Margot

2020

Overview

Automated quantification of behavior is increasingly prevalent in neuroscience research. Human judgments can influence machine-learning-based behavior classification at multiple steps in the process, for both supervised and unsupervised approaches. Such steps include the design of the algorithm for machine learning, the methods used for animal tracking, the choice of training images, and the benchmarking of classification outcomes. However, how these design choices contribute to the interpretation of automated behavioral classifications has not been extensively characterized. Here, we quantify the effects of experimenter choices on the outputs of automated classifiers of Drosophila social behaviors. Drosophila behaviors contain a considerable degree of variability, which was reflected in the confidence levels associated with both human and computer classifications. We found that a diversity of sex combinations and tracking features was important for robust performance of the automated classifiers. In particular, features concerning the relative position of flies contained useful information for training a machine-learning algorithm. These observations shed light on the importance of human influence on tracking algorithms, the selection of training images, and the quality of annotated sample images used to benchmark the performance of a classifier (the ‘ground truth’). Evaluation of these factors is necessary for researchers to accurately interpret behavioral data quantified by a machine-learning algorithm and to further improve automated classifications.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Algorithms / Animals / Annotations / Automation / Behavior / Behavior Observation Techniques - methods / Behavior Observation Techniques - standards / Behavior Observation Techniques - statistics & numerical data / Biology and Life Sciences / Choice (Psychology) / Choice Behavior / Classification / Classifiers / Computer and Information Sciences / Confidence intervals / Data Interpretation, Statistical / Drosophila / Drosophila - physiology / Female / Fruit flies / Gifts / Ground truth / Human influences / Humans / Image classification / Image quality / Influence / Insects / Learning algorithms / Machine learning / Male / Nervous system / Observational learning / Observer Variation / Physical Sciences / Research and Analysis Methods / Research Design - standards / Research Personnel - psychology / Research Personnel - standards / Sex Factors / Social Behavior / Social Sciences / Supervised Machine Learning / Technology application / Tracking / Tracking and trailing / Training / Video Recording - methods / Video Recording - standards / Video Recording - statistics & numerical data