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Activation functions govern the expressivity and stability of neural networks, yet existing comparisons remain largely heuristic. We propose a rigorous framework for their classification via a nine-dimensional integral signature…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-10 Ankur Mali , Lawrence Hall , Jake Williams , Gordon Richards

Most deep neural networks use simple, fixed activation functions, such as sigmoids or rectified linear units, regardless of domain or network structure. We introduce differential equation units (DEUs), an improvement to modern neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-10 MohamadAli Torkamani , Shiv Shankar , Amirmohammad Rooshenas , Phillip Wallis

Deep neural networks paved the way for significant improvements in image visual categorization during the last years. However, even though the tasks are highly varying, differing in complexity and difficulty, existing solutions mostly build…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-29 Mina Basirat , Peter M. Roth

The choice of activation function can have a large effect on the performance of a neural network. While there have been some attempts to hand-engineer novel activation functions, the Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) remains the most…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-14 Garrett Bingham , William Macke , Risto Miikkulainen

Most deep neural networks use simple, fixed activation functions, such as sigmoids or rectified linear units, regardless of domain or network structure. We introduce differential equation units (DEUs), an improvement to modern neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-21 MohamadAli Torkamani , Phillip Wallis , Shiv Shankar , Amirmohammad Rooshenas

Activation functions are essential to deep learning networks. Popular and versatile activation functions are mostly monotonic functions, some non-monotonic activation functions are being explored and show promising performance. But by…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2023-05-26 Junjia Chen , Zhibin Pan

Activation functions (AFs) are crucial components of deep neural networks (DNNs), having a significant impact on their performance. An activation function in a DNN is typically a smooth, nonlinear function that transforms an input signal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-13 Stamatis Mastromichalakis

We study neural networks with trainable low-degree rational activation functions and show that they are more expressive and parameter-efficient than modern piecewise-linear and smooth activations such as ELU, LeakyReLU, LogSigmoid, PReLU,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-16 Maosen Tang , Alex Townsend

Activation function is a key component in deep learning that performs non-linear mappings between the inputs and outputs. Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) has been the most popular activation function across the deep learning community.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-01 Hock Hung Chieng , Noorhaniza Wahid , Pauline Ong

In recent years, neural networks have enjoyed a renaissance as function approximators in reinforcement learning. Two decades after Tesauro's TD-Gammon achieved near top-level human performance in backgammon, the deep reinforcement learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-11-03 Stefan Elfwing , Eiji Uchibe , Kenji Doya

Selecting the most suitable activation function is a critical factor in the effectiveness of deep learning models, as it influences their learning capacity, stability, and computational efficiency. In recent years, the Gaussian Error Linear…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-02 Minhyeok Lee

In the last decade, an active area of research has been devoted to design novel activation functions that are able to help deep neural networks to converge, obtaining better performance. The training procedure of these architectures usually…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-04-26 Franco Manessi , Alessandro Rozza

Activation functions play a critical role in the performance and behaviour of neural networks, significantly impacting their ability to learn and generalise. Traditional activation functions, such as ReLU, sigmoid, and tanh, have been…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2025-03-27 Benjamin David Winter , William John Teahan

Neural networks have proven to be a highly effective tool for solving complex problems in many areas of life. Recently, their importance and practical usability have further been reinforced with the advent of deep learning. One of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-15 Vladimír Kunc , Jiří Kléma

An activation function has a significant impact on the efficiency and robustness of the neural networks. As an alternative, we evolved a cutting-edge non-monotonic activation function, Negative Stimulated Hybrid Activation Function (Nish).…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-20 Yildiray Anagun , Sahin Isik

Deep neural networks, as a powerful system to represent high dimensional complex functions, play a key role in deep learning. Convergence of deep neural networks is a fundamental issue in building the mathematical foundation for deep…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-04 Wentao Huang , Yuesheng Xu , Haizhang Zhang

A pivotal aspect in the design of neural networks lies in selecting activation functions, crucial for introducing nonlinear structures that capture intricate input-output patterns. While the effectiveness of adaptive or trainable activation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-06 Farhad Pourkamali-Anaraki , Tahamina Nasrin , Robert E. Jensen , Amy M. Peterson , Christopher J. Hansen

Artificial neural networks typically have a fixed, non-linear activation function at each neuron. We have designed a novel form of piecewise linear activation function that is learned independently for each neuron using gradient descent.…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2015-04-22 Forest Agostinelli , Matthew Hoffman , Peter Sadowski , Pierre Baldi

This document proposes a parametric activation function (ac.f.) aimed at improving multidimensional nonlinear data regression. It is a established knowledge that nonlinear ac.f's are required for learning nonlinear datasets. This work shows…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-03 Enda D. V. Bigarella

Activation functions play a pivotal role in determining the training dynamics and neural network performance. The widely adopted activation function ReLU despite being simple and effective has few disadvantages including the Dying ReLU…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-26 Sayan Nag , Mayukh Bhattacharyya