English

Unsupervised Learning with Self-Organizing Spiking Neural Networks

Neural and Evolutionary Computing 2019-03-27 v1 Machine Learning

Abstract

We present a system comprising a hybridization of self-organized map (SOM) properties with spiking neural networks (SNNs) that retain many of the features of SOMs. Networks are trained in an unsupervised manner to learn a self-organized lattice of filters via excitatory-inhibitory interactions among populations of neurons. We develop and test various inhibition strategies, such as growing with inter-neuron distance and two distinct levels of inhibition. The quality of the unsupervised learning algorithm is evaluated using examples with known labels. Several biologically-inspired classification tools are proposed and compared, including population-level confidence rating, and n-grams using spike motif algorithm. Using the optimal choice of parameters, our approach produces improvements over state-of-art spiking neural networks.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1807.09374,
  title  = {Unsupervised Learning with Self-Organizing Spiking Neural Networks},
  author = {Hananel Hazan and Daniel J. Saunders and Darpan T. Sanghavi and Hava T. Siegelmann and Robert Kozma},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.09374},
  year   = {2019}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:13:18.969Z