Linear NeuroPaint: An Efficient Baseline for Cross-Session Neural Alignment and Inpainting

Large-scale Neuropixels recordings sample many brain areas, but no single experimental session records every area of interest. NeuroPaint, a transformer-based autoencoder, integrates such recordings by aligning area-specific latent dynamics across sessions and "inpainting" activity in unrecorded areas. Could a linear model, which would be computationally efficient and potentially more interpretable, suffice to achieve this? To address this question, we introduce Linear NeuroPaint, a linear variant of NeuroPaint, and evaluate it on two multi-area Neuropixels datasets. Linear NeuroPaint achieves strong predictive performance on recorded areas, however, it is less accurate than nonlinear models at cross-area inpainting, despite extensive hyperparameter optimization. Moreover, its parameters are not readily interpretable: incomplete cross-session alignment leads parameter-defined neuron clusters to exhibit heterogeneous response profiles. Together, these results show that linear transformations are insufficient for cross-session alignment and cross-area prediction. Nevertheless, Linear NeuroPaint provides a computationally efficient baseline for benchmarking multi-session neural models.