The paper attempts to model short-term memory (STM) for shape-reconstruction tasks by employing a 4-stage deep brain leaning network (DBLN), where the first 2 stages are built with Hebbian learning and the last 2 stages with Type-2 Fuzzy logic. The model is trained stage-wise independently with visual stimulus of the object-geometry as the input of the first stage, EEG acquired from different cortical regions as input and output of respective intermediate stages, and recalled object-geometry as the output of the last stage. Two error feedback loops are employed to train the proposed DBLN. The inner loop adapts the weights of the STM based on a measure of error in model-predicted response with respect to the object-shape recalled by the subject. The outer loop adapts the weights of the iconic (visual) memory based on a measure of error of the model predicted response with respect to the desired object-shape. In the test phase, the DBLN model reproduces the recalled object shape from the given input object geometry.
The motivation of the paper is to test the consistency in STM encoding (in terms of similarity in network weights) for repeated visual stimulation with the same geometric object. Experiments undertaken on healthy subjects, yield high similarity in network weights, whereas patients with pre-frontal lobe Amnesia yield significant discrepancy in the trained weights for any two trials with the same training object. This justifies the importance of the proposed DBLN model in automated diagnosis of patients with learning difficulty. The novelty of the paper lies in the overall design of the DBLN model with special emphasis to the last 2 stages of the network, built with vertical slice based type-2 fuzzy logic, to handle uncertainty in function approximation (with noisy EEG data). The proposed technique outperforms the state-of-the-art functional mapping algorithms with respect to the (pre-defined outer loop) error metric, computational complexity and runtime
