Advancing Spiking Neural Networks for Sequential Modeling with Central Pattern Generators

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lv, Changze, Han, Dongqi, Wang, Yansen, Zheng, Xiaoqing, Huang, Xuanjing, Li, Dongsheng
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Lv, Changze
Han, Dongqi
Wang, Yansen
Zheng, Xiaoqing
Huang, Xuanjing
Li, Dongsheng
author_facet Lv, Changze
Han, Dongqi
Wang, Yansen
Zheng, Xiaoqing
Huang, Xuanjing
Li, Dongsheng
contents Spiking neural networks (SNNs) represent a promising approach to developing artificial neural networks that are both energy-efficient and biologically plausible. However, applying SNNs to sequential tasks, such as text classification and time-series forecasting, has been hindered by the challenge of creating an effective and hardware-friendly spike-form positional encoding (PE) strategy. Drawing inspiration from the central pattern generators (CPGs) in the human brain, which produce rhythmic patterned outputs without requiring rhythmic inputs, we propose a novel PE technique for SNNs, termed CPG-PE. We demonstrate that the commonly used sinusoidal PE is mathematically a specific solution to the membrane potential dynamics of a particular CPG. Moreover, extensive experiments across various domains, including time-series forecasting, natural language processing, and image classification, show that SNNs with CPG-PE outperform their conventional counterparts. Additionally, we perform analysis experiments to elucidate the mechanism through which SNNs encode positional information and to explore the function of CPGs in the human brain. This investigation may offer valuable insights into the fundamental principles of neural computation. Our code is available at https://github.com/microsoft/SeqSNN.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_14362
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Advancing Spiking Neural Networks for Sequential Modeling with Central Pattern Generators
Lv, Changze
Han, Dongqi
Wang, Yansen
Zheng, Xiaoqing
Huang, Xuanjing
Li, Dongsheng
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Spiking neural networks (SNNs) represent a promising approach to developing artificial neural networks that are both energy-efficient and biologically plausible. However, applying SNNs to sequential tasks, such as text classification and time-series forecasting, has been hindered by the challenge of creating an effective and hardware-friendly spike-form positional encoding (PE) strategy. Drawing inspiration from the central pattern generators (CPGs) in the human brain, which produce rhythmic patterned outputs without requiring rhythmic inputs, we propose a novel PE technique for SNNs, termed CPG-PE. We demonstrate that the commonly used sinusoidal PE is mathematically a specific solution to the membrane potential dynamics of a particular CPG. Moreover, extensive experiments across various domains, including time-series forecasting, natural language processing, and image classification, show that SNNs with CPG-PE outperform their conventional counterparts. Additionally, we perform analysis experiments to elucidate the mechanism through which SNNs encode positional information and to explore the function of CPGs in the human brain. This investigation may offer valuable insights into the fundamental principles of neural computation. Our code is available at https://github.com/microsoft/SeqSNN.
title Advancing Spiking Neural Networks for Sequential Modeling with Central Pattern Generators
topic Neural and Evolutionary Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.14362