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

The iso-response method

Throughout the nervous system, neurons integrate high-dimensional input streams and transform them into an output of their own. This integration of incoming signals involves filtering processes and complex non-linear operations. The shapes of these filters and non-linearities determine the computational features of single neurons and their functional roles within larger networks. A detailed characterization of signal integration is thus a central ingredient to understanding information processing in neural circuits. Conventional methods for measuring single-neuron response properties, such as reverse correlation, however, are often limited by the implicit assumption that stimulus integration occurs in a linear fashion. Here, we review a conceptual and experimental alternative that is based on exploring the space of those sensory stimuli that result in the same neural output. As demonstrated by recent results in the auditory and visual system, such iso-response stimuli can be used to identify the non-linearities relevant for stimulus integration, disentangle consecutive neural processing steps, and determine their characteristics with unprecedented precision. Automated closed-loop experiments are crucial for this advance, allowing rapid search strategies for identifying iso-response stimuli during experiments. Prime targets for the method are feed-forward neural signaling chains in sensory systems, but the method has also been successfully applied to feedback systems. Depending on the specific question, “iso-response” may refer to a predefined firing rate, single-spike probability, first-spike latency, or other output measures. Examples from different studies show that substantial progress in understanding neural dynamics and coding can be achieved once rapid online data analysis and stimulus generation, adaptive sampling, and computational modeling are tightly integrated into experiments

Supervised Learning in Spiking Neural Networks with Phase-Change Memory Synapses

Spiking neural networks (SNN) are artificial computational models that have been inspired by the brain's ability to naturally encode and process information in the time domain. The added temporal dimension is believed to render them more computationally efficient than the conventional artificial neural networks, though their full computational capabilities are yet to be explored. Recently, computational memory architectures based on non-volatile memory crossbar arrays have shown great promise to implement parallel computations in artificial and spiking neural networks. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate for the first time, the feasibility to realize high-performance event-driven in-situ supervised learning systems using nanoscale and stochastic phase-change synapses. Our SNN is trained to recognize audio signals of alphabets encoded using spikes in the time domain and to generate spike trains at precise time instances to represent the pixel intensities of their corresponding images. Moreover, with a statistical model capturing the experimental behavior of the devices, we investigate architectural and systems-level solutions for improving the training and inference performance of our computational memory-based system. Combining the computational potential of supervised SNNs with the parallel compute power of computational memory, the work paves the way for next-generation of efficient brain-inspired systems

Demonstrating Advantages of Neuromorphic Computation: A Pilot Study

Neuromorphic devices represent an attempt to mimic aspects of the brain's architecture and dynamics with the aim of replicating its hallmark functional capabilities in terms of computational power, robust learning and energy efficiency. We employ a single-chip prototype of the BrainScaleS 2 neuromorphic system to implement a proof-of-concept demonstration of reward-modulated spike-timing-dependent plasticity in a spiking network that learns to play the Pong video game by smooth pursuit. This system combines an electronic mixed-signal substrate for emulating neuron and synapse dynamics with an embedded digital processor for on-chip learning, which in this work also serves to simulate the virtual environment and learning agent. The analog emulation of neuronal membrane dynamics enables a 1000-fold acceleration with respect to biological real-time, with the entire chip operating on a power budget of 57mW. Compared to an equivalent simulation using state-of-the-art software, the on-chip emulation is at least one order of magnitude faster and three orders of magnitude more energy-efficient. We demonstrate how on-chip learning can mitigate the effects of fixed-pattern noise, which is unavoidable in analog substrates, while making use of temporal variability for action exploration. Learning compensates imperfections of the physical substrate, as manifested in neuronal parameter variability, by adapting synaptic weights to match respective excitability of individual neurons.Comment: Added measurements with noise in NEST simulation, add notice about journal publication. Frontiers in Neuromorphic Engineering (2019

Feature detection using spikes: the greedy approach

A goal of low-level neural processes is to build an efficient code extracting the relevant information from the sensory input. It is believed that this is implemented in cortical areas by elementary inferential computations dynamically extracting the most likely parameters corresponding to the sensory signal. We explore here a neuro-mimetic feed-forward model of the primary visual area (VI) solving this problem in the case where the signal may be described by a robust linear generative model. This model uses an over-complete dictionary of primitives which provides a distributed probabilistic representation of input features. Relying on an efficiency criterion, we derive an algorithm as an approximate solution which uses incremental greedy inference processes. This algorithm is similar to 'Matching Pursuit' and mimics the parallel architecture of neural computations. We propose here a simple implementation using a network of spiking integrate-and-fire neurons which communicate using lateral interactions. Numerical simulations show that this Sparse Spike Coding strategy provides an efficient model for representing visual data from a set of natural images. Even though it is simplistic, this transformation of spatial data into a spatio-temporal pattern of binary events provides an accurate description of some complex neural patterns observed in the spiking activity of biological neural networks.Comment: This work links Matching Pursuit with bayesian inference by providing the underlying hypotheses (linear model, uniform prior, gaussian noise model). A parallel with the parallel and event-based nature of neural computations is explored and we show application to modelling Primary Visual Cortex / image processsing. http://incm.cnrs-mrs.fr/perrinet/dynn/LaurentPerrinet/Publications/Perrinet04tau