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Synaptic plasticity is widely accepted to be the mechanism behind learning in the brain's neural networks. A central question is how synapses, with access to only local information about the network, can still organize collectively and…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2019-12-06 Dina Obeid , Hugo Ramambason , Cengiz Pehlevan

Many mathematical models of synaptic plasticity have been proposed to explain the diversity of plasticity phenomena observed in biological organisms. These models range from simple interpretations of Hebb's postulate, which suggests that…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2025-08-05 Danil Tyulmankov

The impressive lifelong learning in animal brains is primarily enabled by plastic changes in synaptic connectivity. Importantly, these changes are not passive, but are actively controlled by neuromodulation, which is itself under the…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2021-07-06 Thomas Miconi , Aditya Rawal , Jeff Clune , Kenneth O. Stanley

Modern data-driven machine learning system designs exploit inductive biases in architectural structure, invariance and equivariance requirements, task-specific loss functions, and computational optimization tools. Previous works have…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Achref Jaziri , Sina Ditzel , Iuliia Pliushch , Visvanathan Ramesh

Theoretical models of neuronal function consider different mechanisms through which networks learn, classify and discern inputs. A central focus of these models is to understand how associations are established amongst neurons, in order to…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2015-05-19 Harold P. de Vladar , Eörs Szathmáry

Learning in the brain is poorly understood and learning rules that respect biological constraints, yet yield deep hierarchical representations, are still unknown. Here, we propose a learning rule that takes inspiration from neuroscience and…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2021-10-27 Bernd Illing , Jean Ventura , Guillaume Bellec , Wulfram Gerstner

Continual learning is the problem of sequentially learning new tasks or knowledge while protecting previously acquired knowledge. However, catastrophic forgetting poses a grand challenge for neural networks performing such learning process.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-01 Vithursan Thangarasa , Thomas Miconi , Graham W. Taylor

How neuronal circuits achieve credit assignment remains a central unsolved question in systems neuroscience. Various studies have suggested plausible solutions for back-propagating error signals through multi-layer networks. These purely…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2023-12-12 Julian Rossbroich , Friedemann Zenke

Optimization algorithms are fundamental to modern deep learning, yet most widely used methods rely on update rules based primarily on local gradient statistics. We introduce NeuroPlastic, a plasticity-modulated optimizer that augments…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-30 Douglas Jiang , Yuechen Wang , Jiayi Wang , Jiaying Geng , Qinglong Wang , Feng Tian

Interest in biologically inspired alternatives to backpropagation is driven by the desire to both advance connections between deep learning and neuroscience and address backpropagation's shortcomings on tasks such as online, continual…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2020-06-18 Jack Lindsey , Ashok Litwin-Kumar

Hebbian and anti-Hebbian plasticity are widely observed in the biological brain, yet their theoretical understanding remains limited. In this work, we find that when a learning method is regularized with L2 weight decay, its learning signal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-02 David Koplow , Tomaso Poggio , Liu Ziyin

Recently, the use of bio-inspired learning techniques such as Hebbian learning and its closely-related Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity (STDP) variant have drawn significant attention for the design of compute-efficient AI systems that can…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2024-11-19 Ali Safa

The fundamental `plasticity' of the nervous system (i.e high adaptability at different structural levels) is primarily based on Hebbian learning mechanisms that modify the synaptic connections. The modifications rely on neural activity and…

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems · Physics 2008-06-24 Gabor Szirtes , Zsolt Palotai , Andras Lorincz

It has been demonstrated that one of the most striking features of the nervous system, the so called 'plasticity' (i.e high adaptability at different structural levels) is primarily based on Hebbian learning which is a collection of…

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems · Physics 2007-05-23 G. Szirtes , Zs. Palotai , A. Lorincz

Standard transformer architectures learn fixed slow-weight representations during training and lack mechanisms for rapid adaptation within an episode. In contrast, biological neural systems address this through fast synaptic updates that…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2026-05-06 Gavin Money , Sindhuja Penchala , Jiacheng Li , Noorbakhsh Amiri Golilarz

Imagine a robot controller with the ability to adapt like human synapses, dynamically rewiring itself to overcome unforeseen challenges in real time. This paper proposes a novel zero-shot adaptation mechanism for evolutionary robotics,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-08-06 Hamze Hammami , Eva Denisa Barbulescu , Talal Shaikh , Mouayad Aldada , Muhammad Saad Munawar

Understanding how biological neural networks are shaped via local plasticity mechanisms can lead to energy-efficient and self-adaptive information processing systems, which promises to mitigate some of the current roadblocks in edge…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2025-04-10 Willian Soares Girão , Nicoletta Risi , Elisabetta Chicca

Humans and other animals are capable of improving their learning performance as they solve related tasks from a given problem domain, to the point of being able to learn from extremely limited data. While synaptic plasticity is generically…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-04 Nicolas Zucchet , Simon Schug , Johannes von Oswald , Dominic Zhao , João Sacramento

Deep learning networks generally use non-biological learning methods. By contrast, networks based on more biologically plausible learning, such as Hebbian learning, show comparatively poor performance and difficulties of implementation.…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2021-11-02 Thomas Miconi

Asynchrony, overlaps and delays in sensory-motor signals introduce ambiguity as to which stimuli, actions, and rewards are causally related. Only the repetition of reward episodes helps distinguish true cause-effect relationships from…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2014-09-10 Andrea Soltoggio