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Related papers: Physical learning beyond the quasistatic limit

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We describe a mechanism for biological learning and adaptation based on two simple principles: (I) Neuronal activity propagates only through the network's strongest synaptic connections (extremal dynamics), and (II) The strengths of active…

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks · Physics 2009-10-31 Per Bak , Dante R Chialvo

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

The brain modifies its synaptic strengths during learning in order to better adapt to its environment. However, the underlying plasticity rules that govern learning are unknown. Many proposals have been suggested, including Hebbian…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2020-12-09 Aran Nayebi , Sanjana Srivastava , Surya Ganguli , Daniel L. K. Yamins

Learning in living organisms is typically associated with networks of neurons. The use of large numbers of adjustable units has also been a crucial factor in the continued success of artificial neural networks. In light of the complexity of…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2024-05-10 Matthew Smart , Stanislav Y. Shvartsman , Martin Mönnigmann

To learn useful dynamics on long time scales, neurons must use plasticity rules that account for long-term, circuit-wide effects of synaptic changes. In other words, neural circuits must solve a credit assignment problem to appropriately…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2019-05-30 Owen Marschall , Kyunghyun Cho , Cristina Savin

Backpropagation learning algorithm, the workhorse of modern artificial intelligence, is notoriously difficult to implement in physical neural networks. Equilibrium Propagation (EP) is an alternative with comparable efficiency and strong…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Karol Sajnok , Michał Matuszewski

The rapid growth of deep neural networks (DNNs) has brought increasing attention to their energy use during training and inference. Here, we establish the thermodynamic bounds on energy consumption in quasi-static analog DNNs by mapping…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-12-09 Alexei V. Tkachenko

This work establishes that a physical system can perform statistical learning without gradient computations, via an Agnostic Equilibrium Propagation (Aeqprop) procedure that combines energy minimization, homeostatic control, and nudging…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-31 Benjamin Scellier , Siddhartha Mishra , Yoshua Bengio , Yann Ollivier

Understanding real-world dynamical phenomena remains a challenging task. Across various scientific disciplines, machine learning has advanced as the go-to technology to analyze nonlinear dynamical systems, identify patterns in big data, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-07 Kevin Linka , Amelie Schafer , Xuhui Meng , Zongren Zou , George Em Karniadakis , Ellen Kuhl

Many learning algorithms used as normative models in neuroscience or as candidate approaches for learning on neuromorphic chips learn by contrasting one set of network states with another. These Contrastive Learning (CL) algorithms are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-01 Ezekiel Williams , Colin Bredenberg , Guillaume Lajoie

Equilibrium systems are a powerful way to express neural computations. As special cases, they include models of great current interest in both neuroscience and machine learning, such as deep neural networks, equilibrium recurrent neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-01 Alexander Meulemans , Nicolas Zucchet , Seijin Kobayashi , Johannes von Oswald , João Sacramento

Brain-inspired learning in physical hardware has enormous potential to learn fast at minimal energy expenditure. One of the characteristics of biological learning systems is their ability to learn in the presence of various noise sources.…

How can we build agents that keep learning from experience, quickly and efficiently, after their initial training? Here we take inspiration from the main mechanism of learning in biological brains: synaptic plasticity, carefully tuned by…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2018-08-01 Thomas Miconi , Jeff Clune , Kenneth O. Stanley

Humans can learn languages from remarkably little experience. Developing computational models that explain this ability has been a major challenge in cognitive science. Bayesian models that build in strong inductive biases - factors that…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-05-25 R. Thomas McCoy , Thomas L. Griffiths

Learning with physical systems is an emerging paradigm that seeks to harness the intrinsic nonlinear dynamics of physical substrates for learning. The impetus for a paradigm shift in how hardware is used for computational intelligence stems…

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks · Physics 2026-04-28 Francesco Caravelli , Gianluca Milano , Adam Z. Stieg , Carlo Ricciardi , Simon Anthony Brown , Zdenka Kuncic

Hebbian plasticity is a powerful principle that allows biological brains to learn from their lifetime experience. By contrast, artificial neural networks trained with backpropagation generally have fixed connection weights that do not…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2016-10-20 Thomas Miconi

Neural networks have been demonstrated to be able to accelerate the modeling and inverse design of optical and electromagnetic devices by serving as fast surrogates for electromagnetic solvers. Nevertheless, such neural networks can be…

Inspired by the brain, we present a physical alternative to traditional digital neural networks -- a microfluidic network in which nodes are connected by conical, electrolyte-filled channels acting as memristive iontronic synapses. Their…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-11-07 Monica Conte , René van Roij , Marjolein Dijkstra

Passive elastic elements can contribute to stability, energetic efficiency, and impact absorption in both biological and robotic systems. They also add dynamical complexity which makes them more challenging to model and control. The impact…

Robotics · Computer Science 2019-09-30 Ali Marjaninejad , Jie Tan , Francisco J. Valero-Cuevas

We consider long-lived agents who interact repeatedly in a social network. In each period, each agent learns about an unknown state by observing a private signal and her neighbors' actions from the previous period before choosing her own…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-08-19 Florian Brandl