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The back-propagation algorithm is the cornerstone of deep learning. Despite its importance, few variations of the algorithm have been attempted. This work presents an approach to discover new variations of the back-propagation equation. We…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2018-08-09 Maximilian Alber , Irwan Bello , Barret Zoph , Pieter-Jan Kindermans , Prajit Ramachandran , Quoc Le

Inspired by key neuroscience principles, deep learning has driven exponential breakthroughs in developing functional models of perception and other cognitive processes. A key to this success has been the implementation of crucial features…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2025-11-07 Guillaume Etter

Feedback alignment and related weight-transport-free algorithms are often proposed as biologically plausible alternatives to backpropagation, yet they are typically formulated in discrete phases with implicitly synchronized forward and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Marc Gong Bacvanski , Liu Ziyin , Tomaso Poggio

While effective, the backpropagation (BP) algorithm exhibits limitations in terms of biological plausibility, computational cost, and suitability for online learning. As a result, there has been a growing interest in developing alternative…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2023-08-07 Yanis Bahroun , Shagesh Sridharan , Atithi Acharya , Dmitri B. Chklovskii , Anirvan M. Sengupta

Despite the striking successes of deep neural networks trained with gradient-based optimization, these methods differ fundamentally from their biological counterparts. This gap raises key questions about how nature achieves robust,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-15 Mattia Scardecchia

Continual learning is a key feature of biological neural systems, but artificial neural networks often suffer from catastrophic forgetting. Instead of backpropagation, biologically plausible learning algorithms may enable stable continual…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2025-08-19 Denis Larionov , Nikolay Bazenkov , Mikhail Kiselev

The capabilities of natural neural systems have inspired new generations of machine learning algorithms as well as neuromorphic very large-scale integrated (VLSI) circuits capable of fast, low-power information processing. However, it has…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2024-11-12 Alpha Renner , Forrest Sheldon , Anatoly Zlotnik , Louis Tao , Andrew Sornborger

Recent work has shown that it is possible to train deep neural networks that are provably robust to norm-bounded adversarial perturbations. Most of these methods are based on minimizing an upper bound on the worst-case loss over all…

Skip connections made the training of very deep networks possible and have become an indispensable component in a variety of neural architectures. A completely satisfactory explanation for their success remains elusive. Here, we present a…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2018-03-06 A. Emin Orhan , Xaq Pitkow

Despite its great success, backpropagation has certain limitations that necessitate the investigation of new learning methods. In this study, we present a biologically plausible local learning rule that improves upon Hebb's well-known…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2022-12-27 Hongchao Zhou

Stochastic gradient descent with backpropagation is the workhorse of artificial neural networks. It has long been recognized that backpropagation fails to be a biologically plausible algorithm. Fundamentally, it is a non-local procedure --…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-12-24 Ganlin Song , Ruitu Xu , John Lafferty

The backpropagation algorithm has promoted the rapid development of deep learning, but it relies on a large amount of labeled data and still has a large gap with how humans learn. The human brain can quickly learn various conceptual…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2023-04-25 Yiting Dong , Dongcheng Zhao , Yang Li , Yi Zeng

Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) provide a promising framework for energy-efficient and biologically grounded computation; however, scalable learning in deep recurrent architectures with sparse connectivity remains a major challenge. In this…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2026-05-04 Bo Tang , Weiwei Xie

Humans excel at continually acquiring, consolidating, and retaining information from an ever-changing environment, whereas artificial neural networks (ANNs) exhibit catastrophic forgetting. There are considerable differences in the…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2023-04-17 Fahad Sarfraz , Elahe Arani , Bahram Zonooz

The plasticity of the conduction delay between neurons plays a fundamental role in learning. However, the exact underlying mechanisms in the brain for this modulation is still an open problem. Understanding the precise adjustment of…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2020-11-19 Alireza Nadafian , Mohammad Ganjtabesh

The backpropagation algorithm, or backprop, is a widely utilized optimization technique in deep learning. While there's growing evidence suggesting that models trained with backprop can accurately explain neuronal data, no backprop-like…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-28 Gananath R

We introduce the HSIC (Hilbert-Schmidt independence criterion) bottleneck for training deep neural networks. The HSIC bottleneck is an alternative to the conventional cross-entropy loss and backpropagation that has a number of distinct…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-06 Wan-Duo Kurt Ma , J. P. Lewis , W. Bastiaan Kleijn

Backpropagation (BP) remains the dominant and most successful method for training parameters of deep neural network models. However, BP relies on two computationally distinct phases, does not provide a satisfactory explanation of biological…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-12 Sander Dalm , Marcel van Gerven , Nasir Ahmad

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are a viable alternative to conventional artificial neural networks when resource efficiency and computational complexity are of importance. A major advantage of SNNs is their binary information transfer…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2023-10-18 Daniel Gerlinghoff , Tao Luo , Rick Siow Mong Goh , Weng-Fai Wong

Equilibrium propagation (EP) is a biologically plausible alternative to backpropagation (BP), but its effectiveness can degrade in deeper and more challenging learning settings. In parallel, dendritic neural networks have demonstrated…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Yoshimasa Kubo