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Main Authors: Shervani-Tabar, Navid, Mirhoseini, Marzieh Alireza, Rosenbaum, Robert
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08408
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author Shervani-Tabar, Navid
Mirhoseini, Marzieh Alireza
Rosenbaum, Robert
author_facet Shervani-Tabar, Navid
Mirhoseini, Marzieh Alireza
Rosenbaum, Robert
contents Deep neural networks have achieved impressive performance through carefully engineered training strategies. Nonetheless, such methods lack parallels in biological neural circuits, relying heavily on non-local credit assignment, precise initialization, normalization layers, batch processing, and large datasets. Biologically plausible plasticity rules, such as random feedback alignment, often suffer from instability and unbounded weight growth without these engineered methods, while Hebbian-type schemes fail to provide goal-oriented credit. In this study, we demonstrate that incorporating Oja's plasticity rule into error-driven training yields stable, efficient learning in feedforward and recurrent architectures, obviating the need for carefully engineered tricks. Our results show that Oja's rule preserves richer activation subspaces, mitigates exploding or vanishing signals, and improves short-term memory in recurrent networks. Notably, meta-learned local plasticity rules incorporating Oja's principle not only match but surpass standard backpropagation in data-scarce regimes. These findings reveal a biologically grounded pathway bridging engineered deep networks and plausible synaptic mechanisms.
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institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Oja's plasticity rule overcomes several challenges of training neural networks under biological constraints
Shervani-Tabar, Navid
Mirhoseini, Marzieh Alireza
Rosenbaum, Robert
Neurons and Cognition
Machine Learning
Deep neural networks have achieved impressive performance through carefully engineered training strategies. Nonetheless, such methods lack parallels in biological neural circuits, relying heavily on non-local credit assignment, precise initialization, normalization layers, batch processing, and large datasets. Biologically plausible plasticity rules, such as random feedback alignment, often suffer from instability and unbounded weight growth without these engineered methods, while Hebbian-type schemes fail to provide goal-oriented credit. In this study, we demonstrate that incorporating Oja's plasticity rule into error-driven training yields stable, efficient learning in feedforward and recurrent architectures, obviating the need for carefully engineered tricks. Our results show that Oja's rule preserves richer activation subspaces, mitigates exploding or vanishing signals, and improves short-term memory in recurrent networks. Notably, meta-learned local plasticity rules incorporating Oja's principle not only match but surpass standard backpropagation in data-scarce regimes. These findings reveal a biologically grounded pathway bridging engineered deep networks and plausible synaptic mechanisms.
title Oja's plasticity rule overcomes several challenges of training neural networks under biological constraints
topic Neurons and Cognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08408