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Training deep neural networks typically relies on backpropagating high dimensional error signals a computationally intensive process with little evidence supporting its implementation in the brain. However, since most tasks involve…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-15 Maher Hanut , Jonathan Kadmon

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

Backpropagation algorithm is indispensable for the training of feedforward neural networks. It requires propagating error gradients sequentially from the output layer all the way back to the input layer. The backward locking in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-07-24 Zhouyuan Huo , Bin Gu , Qian Yang , Heng Huang

The brain processes information through many layers of neurons. This deep architecture is representationally powerful, but it complicates learning by making it hard to identify the responsible neurons when a mistake is made. In machine…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2014-11-04 Timothy P. Lillicrap , Daniel Cownden , Douglas B. Tweed , Colin J. Akerman

Backpropagation is the default algorithm for training deep neural networks due to its simplicity, efficiency and high convergence rate. However, its requirements make it impossible to be implemented in a human brain. In recent years, more…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-01 Albert Jiménez Sanfiz , Mohamed Akrout

Backpropagation is driving today's artificial neural networks (ANNs). However, despite extensive research, it remains unclear if the brain implements this algorithm. Among neuroscientists, reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms are often…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2020-04-24 Benjamin James Lansdell , Prashanth Ravi Prakash , Konrad Paul Kording

Current algorithms for deep learning probably cannot run in the brain because they rely on weight transport, where forward-path neurons transmit their synaptic weights to a feedback path, in a way that is likely impossible biologically. An…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-13 Mohamed Akrout , Collin Wilson , Peter C. Humphreys , Timothy Lillicrap , Douglas Tweed

The backpropagation of error algorithm (BP) is impossible to implement in a real brain. The recent success of deep networks in machine learning and AI, however, has inspired proposals for understanding how the brain might learn across…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-21 Sergey Bartunov , Adam Santoro , Blake A. Richards , Luke Marris , Geoffrey E. Hinton , Timothy Lillicrap

We propose Sideways, an approximate backpropagation scheme for training video models. In standard backpropagation, the gradients and activations at every computation step through the model are temporally synchronized. The forward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-01 Mateusz Malinowski , Grzegorz Swirszcz , Joao Carreira , Viorica Patraucean

While the backpropagation of error algorithm enables deep neural network training, it implies (i) bidirectional synaptic weight transport and (ii) update locking until the forward and backward passes are completed. Not only do these…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-01-19 Charlotte Frenkel , Martin Lefebvre , David Bol

Training deep neural networks (DNNs) with backpropagation (BP) achieves state-of-the-art accuracy but requires global error propagation and full parameterization, leading to substantial memory and computational overhead. Direct Feedback…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-30 Arani Roy , Marco P. Apolinario , Shristi Das Biswas , Kaushik Roy

Backpropagation is the core learning mechanism underlying deep learning. However, whether and how this algorithm is implemented in the brain remains highly debated. In particular, while forward activations of pretrained models reliably map…

The feedback alignment (FA) algorithm offers a biologically plausible alternative to backpropagation (BP) for training neural networks yet notably fails to scale to convolutional architectures. Modifications have been proposed to address…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Jake Lance , Larry Kieu

Error backpropagation is a highly effective mechanism for learning high-quality hierarchical features in deep networks. Updating the features or weights in one layer, however, requires waiting for the propagation of error signals from…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2017-11-21 Hesham Mostafa , Vishwajith Ramesh , Gert Cauwenberghs

Backpropagation is widely used to train artificial neural networks, but its relationship to synaptic plasticity in the brain is unknown. Some biological models of backpropagation rely on feedback projections that are symmetric with…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2023-02-08 Navid Shervani-Tabar , Robert Rosenbaum

Models of sensory processing and learning in the cortex need to efficiently assign credit to synapses in all areas. In deep learning, a known solution is error backpropagation, which however requires biologically implausible weight…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2024-02-05 Kevin Max , Laura Kriener , Garibaldi Pineda García , Thomas Nowotny , Ismael Jaras , Walter Senn , Mihai A. Petrovici

We theoretically analyze the Feedback Alignment (FA) algorithm, an efficient alternative to backpropagation for training neural networks. We provide convergence guarantees with rates for deep linear networks for both continuous and discrete…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-22 Manuela Girotti , Ioannis Mitliagkas , Gauthier Gidel

While error backpropagation (BP) has dominated the training of nearly all modern neural networks for a long time, it suffers from several biological plausibility issues such as the symmetric weight requirement and synchronous updates.…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2023-04-05 Huzi Cheng , Joshua W. Brown

Deep neural network architectures have recently produced excellent results in a variety of areas in artificial intelligence and visual recognition, well surpassing traditional shallow architectures trained using hand-designed features. The…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2016-04-15 Catalin Ionescu , Orestis Vantzos , Cristian Sminchisescu

We show that deep networks can be trained using Hebbian updates yielding similar performance to ordinary back-propagation on challenging image datasets. To overcome the unrealistic symmetry in connections between layers, implicit in…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2019-03-14 Yali Amit