1,958 research outputs found
Stochastic Synapses Enable Efficient Brain-Inspired Learning Machines
Recent studies have shown that synaptic unreliability is a robust and
sufficient mechanism for inducing the stochasticity observed in cortex. Here,
we introduce Synaptic Sampling Machines, a class of neural network models that
uses synaptic stochasticity as a means to Monte Carlo sampling and unsupervised
learning. Similar to the original formulation of Boltzmann machines, these
models can be viewed as a stochastic counterpart of Hopfield networks, but
where stochasticity is induced by a random mask over the connections. Synaptic
stochasticity plays the dual role of an efficient mechanism for sampling, and a
regularizer during learning akin to DropConnect. A local synaptic plasticity
rule implementing an event-driven form of contrastive divergence enables the
learning of generative models in an on-line fashion. Synaptic sampling machines
perform equally well using discrete-timed artificial units (as in Hopfield
networks) or continuous-timed leaky integrate & fire neurons. The learned
representations are remarkably sparse and robust to reductions in bit precision
and synapse pruning: removal of more than 75% of the weakest connections
followed by cursory re-learning causes a negligible performance loss on
benchmark classification tasks. The spiking neuron-based synaptic sampling
machines outperform existing spike-based unsupervised learners, while
potentially offering substantial advantages in terms of power and complexity,
and are thus promising models for on-line learning in brain-inspired hardware
Unsupervised Visual Feature Learning with Spike-timing-dependent Plasticity: How Far are we from Traditional Feature Learning Approaches?
Spiking neural networks (SNNs) equipped with latency coding and spike-timing
dependent plasticity rules offer an alternative to solve the data and energy
bottlenecks of standard computer vision approaches: they can learn visual
features without supervision and can be implemented by ultra-low power hardware
architectures. However, their performance in image classification has never
been evaluated on recent image datasets. In this paper, we compare SNNs to
auto-encoders on three visual recognition datasets, and extend the use of SNNs
to color images. The analysis of the results helps us identify some bottlenecks
of SNNs: the limits of on-center/off-center coding, especially for color
images, and the ineffectiveness of current inhibition mechanisms. These issues
should be addressed to build effective SNNs for image recognition
Role of homeostasis in learning sparse representations
Neurons in the input layer of primary visual cortex in primates develop
edge-like receptive fields. One approach to understanding the emergence of this
response is to state that neural activity has to efficiently represent sensory
data with respect to the statistics of natural scenes. Furthermore, it is
believed that such an efficient coding is achieved using a competition across
neurons so as to generate a sparse representation, that is, where a relatively
small number of neurons are simultaneously active. Indeed, different models of
sparse coding, coupled with Hebbian learning and homeostasis, have been
proposed that successfully match the observed emergent response. However, the
specific role of homeostasis in learning such sparse representations is still
largely unknown. By quantitatively assessing the efficiency of the neural
representation during learning, we derive a cooperative homeostasis mechanism
that optimally tunes the competition between neurons within the sparse coding
algorithm. We apply this homeostasis while learning small patches taken from
natural images and compare its efficiency with state-of-the-art algorithms.
Results show that while different sparse coding algorithms give similar coding
results, the homeostasis provides an optimal balance for the representation of
natural images within the population of neurons. Competition in sparse coding
is optimized when it is fair. By contributing to optimizing statistical
competition across neurons, homeostasis is crucial in providing a more
efficient solution to the emergence of independent components
Asynchronous spiking neurons, the natural key to exploit temporal sparsity
Inference of Deep Neural Networks for stream signal (Video/Audio) processing in edge devices is still challenging. Unlike the most state of the art inference engines which are efficient for static signals, our brain is optimized for real-time dynamic signal processing. We believe one important feature of the brain (asynchronous state-full processing) is the key to its excellence in this domain. In this work, we show how asynchronous processing with state-full neurons allows exploitation of the existing sparsity in natural signals. This paper explains three different types of sparsity and proposes an inference algorithm which exploits all types of sparsities in the execution of already trained networks. Our experiments in three different applications (Handwritten digit recognition, Autonomous Steering and Hand-Gesture recognition) show that this model of inference reduces the number of required operations for sparse input data by a factor of one to two orders of magnitudes. Additionally, due to fully asynchronous processing this type of inference can be run on fully distributed and scalable neuromorphic hardware platforms
SIMPEL: Circuit model for photonic spike processing laser neurons
We propose an equivalent circuit model for photonic spike processing laser
neurons with an embedded saturable absorber---a simulation model for photonic
excitable lasers (SIMPEL). We show that by mapping the laser neuron rate
equations into a circuit model, SPICE analysis can be used as an efficient and
accurate engine for numerical calculations, capable of generalization to a
variety of different laser neuron types found in literature. The development of
this model parallels the Hodgkin--Huxley model of neuron biophysics, a circuit
framework which brought efficiency, modularity, and generalizability to the
study of neural dynamics. We employ the model to study various
signal-processing effects such as excitability with excitatory and inhibitory
pulses, binary all-or-nothing response, and bistable dynamics.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure
Multi-layered Spiking Neural Network with Target Timestamp Threshold Adaptation and STDP
Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are good candidates to produce
ultra-energy-efficient hardware. However, the performance of these models is
currently behind traditional methods. Introducing multi-layered SNNs is a
promising way to reduce this gap. We propose in this paper a new threshold
adaptation system which uses a timestamp objective at which neurons should
fire. We show that our method leads to state-of-the-art classification rates on
the MNIST dataset (98.60%) and the Faces/Motorbikes dataset (99.46%) with an
unsupervised SNN followed by a linear SVM. We also investigate the sparsity
level of the network by testing different inhibition policies and STDP rules
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