We demonstrate bistable attractor dynamics in a spiking neural network implemented with neuromorphic VLSI hardware. The on-chip network consists of three interacting populations (two excitatory, one inhibitory) of leaky integrate-and-fire (LIF) neurons. One excitatory population is distinguished by strong synaptic self-excitation, which sustains meta-stable states of “high” and “low”-firing activity. Depending on the overall excitability, transitions to the “high” state may be evoked by external stimulation, or may occur spontaneously due to random activity fluctuations. In the former case, the “high” state retains a “working memory” of a stimulus until well after its release. In the latter case, “high” states remain stable for seconds, three orders of magnitude longer than the largest time-scale implemented in the circuitry. Evoked and spontaneous transitions form a continuum and may exhibit a wide range of latencies, depending on the strength of external stimulation and of recurrent synaptic excitation. In addition, we investigated “corrupted” “high” states comprising neurons of both excitatory populations. Within a “basin of attraction,” the network dynamics “corrects” such states and re-establishes the prototypical “high” state. We conclude that, with effective theoretical guidance, full-fledged attractor dynamics can be realized with comparatively small populations of neuromorphic hardware neurons.
We describe and demonstrate a neuromorphic, analog VLSI chip (termed F-LANN) hosting 128 integrate-andfire (IF) neurons with spike-frequency adaptation, and 16,384 plastic bistable synapses implementing a self-regulated form of Hebbian, spike-driven, stochastic plasticity. The chip is designed to offer a high degree of reconfigurability: each synapse may be individually configured at any time to be either excitatory or inhibitory and to receive either recurrent input from an on-chip neuron or AER-based input from an off-chip neuron. The initial state of each synapse can be set as potentiated or depressed, and the state of each synapse can be read and stored on a computer.
Estimating the speed and direction of moving objects is a crucial component of agents behaving in a dynamic world. Biological organisms perform this task by means of the neural connections originating from their retinal ganglion cells. In artificial systems the optic flow is usually extracted by comparing activity of two or more frames captured with a vision sensor. Designing artificial motion flow detectors which are as fast, robust, and efficient as the ones found in biological systems is however a challenging task. Inspired by the architecture proposed by Barlow and Levick in 1965 to explain the spiking activity of the direction-selective ganglion cells in the rabbit's retina, we introduce an architecture for robust optical flow extraction with an analog neuromorphic multi-chip system. The task is performed by a feed-forward network of analog integrate-and-fire neurons whose inputs are provided by contrast-sensitive photoreceptors. Computation is supported by the precise time of spike emission, and the extraction of the optical flow is based on time lag in the activation of nearby retinal neurons. Mimicking ganglion cells our neuromorphic detectors encode the amplitude and the direction of the apparent visual motion in their output spiking pattern. Hereby we describe the architectural aspects, discuss its latency, scalability, and robustness properties and demonstrate that a network of mismatched delicate analog elements can reliably extract the optical flow from a simple visual scene. This work shows how precise time of spike emission used as a computational basis, biological inspiration, and neuromorphic systems can be used together for solving specific tasks.
Abstract-We illustrate key features of an analog, VLSI (aVLSI) chip implementing a network composed of 32 integrateand-fire (IF) neurons with firing rate adaptation (AHP current), endowed with both a recurrent synaptic connectivity and AER-based connectivity with external, AER-compliant devices. Synaptic connectivity can be reconfigured at will as for the presence/absence of each synaptic contact and the excitatory/inhibitory nature of each synapse. Excitatory synapses are plastic through a spike-driven stochastic, Hebbian mechanism, and possess a self-limiting mechanism aiming at an optimal use of synaptic resources for Hebbian learning.
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