English
Related papers

Related papers: Task-Specific Activation Functions for Neuroevolut…

200 papers

Activation functions play a decisive role in determining the capacity of Deep Neural Networks as they enable neural networks to capture inherent nonlinearities present in data fed to them. The prior research on activation functions…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2023-05-31 Jamshaid Ul Rahman , Faiza Makhdoom , Dianchen Lu

Modern language models (LMs) have significantly advanced generative modeling in natural language processing (NLP). Despite their success, LMs often struggle with adaptation to new contexts in real-time applications. A promising approach to…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-02-11 Hieu Trung Nguyen , Bao Nguyen , Binh Nguyen , Viet Anh Nguyen

Activation functions are core components of all deep learning architectures. Currently, the most popular activation functions are smooth ReLU variants like GELU and SiLU. These are self-gated activation functions where the range of the…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2024-06-03 Allen Hao Huang

Many activation functions have been proposed in the past, but selecting an adequate one requires trial and error. We propose a new methodology of designing activation functions within a neural network at each layer. We call this technique…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-02-28 Mark Harmon , Diego Klabjan

We propose a simple extension to the ReLU-family of activation functions that allows them to shift the mean activation across a layer towards zero. Combined with proper weight initialization, this alleviates the need for normalization…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-03-16 Lars Eidnes , Arild Nøkland

In our previous work [Ma and Chan (2023)], we presented a feedforward unitary equivariant neural network. We proposed three distinct activation functions tailored for this network: a softsign function with a small residue, an identity…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-25 Pui-Wai Ma

Activation functions are central to deep networks, influencing non-linearity, feature learning, convergence, and robustness. This paper proposes the Adaptive Arctangent Gated Activation (ArcGate) function, a flexible formulation that…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2026-05-15 Avik Bhattacharya , Siddhant Dnyanesh Gole , Subhasis Chaudhuri , Alejandro C. Frery , Biplab Banerjee

Previous literature offers limited clues on how to learn a periodic function using modern neural networks. We start with a study of the extrapolation properties of neural networks; we prove and demonstrate experimentally that the standard…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-27 Liu Ziyin , Tilman Hartwig , Masahito Ueda

Random feature (RF) method is a powerful kernel approximation technique, but is typically equipped with fixed activation functions, limiting its adaptability across diverse tasks. To overcome this limitation, we introduce the Random Feature…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-06 Zailin Ma , Jiansheng Yang , Yaodong Yang

Activation functions (AF) are necessary components of neural networks that allow approximation of functions, but AFs in current use are usually simple monotonically increasing functions. In this paper, we propose trainable compound AF (TCA)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-28 Paul M. Baggenstoss

Activation functions are critical components in deep neural networks, directly influencing gradient flow, training stability, and model performance. Traditional functions like ReLU suffer from dead neuron problems, while sigmoid and tanh…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-31 Sergii Kavun

Deep learning researchers have a keen interest in proposing two new novel activation functions which can boost network performance. A good choice of activation function can have significant consequences in improving network performance. A…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-12 Koushik Biswas , Sandeep Kumar , Shilpak Banerjee , Ashish Kumar Pandey

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) agents frequently suffer from neuronal activity loss, which impairs their ability to adapt to new data and learn continually. A common method to quantify and address this issue is the tau-dormant neuron…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Jiashun Liu , Zihao Wu , Johan Obando-Ceron , Pablo Samuel Castro , Aaron Courville , Ling Pan

In this paper we present a modified version of the Hyperbolic Tangent Activation Function as a learning unit generator for neural networks. The function uses an integer calibration constant as an approximation to the Euler number, e, based…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2017-07-06 Vincent Ike Anireh , Emmanuel Ndidi Osegi

Activation functions introduce nonlinearity into deep neural networks. Most popular activation functions allow positive values to pass through while blocking or suppressing negative values. From the idea that positive values and negative…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2024-07-30 Junjia Chen , Zhibin Pan

The impressive expressive power of deep neural networks (DNNs) underlies their widespread applicability. However, while the theoretical capacity of deep architectures is high, the practical expressive power achieved through successful…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-21 Zezhong Zhang , Feng Bao , Guannan Zhang

As the complexity of neural network models has grown, it has become increasingly important to optimize their design automatically through metalearning. Methods for discovering hyperparameters, topologies, and learning rate schedules have…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-28 Santiago Gonzalez , Risto Miikkulainen

We introduce SPLASH units, a class of learnable activation functions shown to simultaneously improve the accuracy of deep neural networks while also improving their robustness to adversarial attacks. SPLASH units have both a simple…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-17 Mohammadamin Tavakoli , Forest Agostinelli , Pierre Baldi

Activation functions are essential to introduce nonlinearity into neural networks, with the Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) often favored for its simplicity and effectiveness. Motivated by the structural similarity between a shallow…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-30 Jiayun Li , Yuxiao Cheng , Yiwen Lu , Zhuofan Xia , Yilin Mo , Gao Huang

There has been a growing interest in expressivity of deep neural networks. However, most of the existing work about this topic focuses only on the specific activation function such as ReLU or sigmoid. In this paper, we investigate the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-07-24 Ilsang Ohn , Yongdai Kim