Extending Spike-Timing Dependent Plasticity to Learning Synaptic Delays

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Dominijanni, Marissa, Ororbia, Alexander, Regan, Kenneth W.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Dominijanni, Marissa
Ororbia, Alexander
Regan, Kenneth W.
author_facet Dominijanni, Marissa
Ororbia, Alexander
Regan, Kenneth W.
contents Synaptic delays play a crucial role in biological neuronal networks, where their modulation has been observed in mammalian learning processes. In the realm of neuromorphic computing, although spiking neural networks (SNNs) aim to emulate biology more closely than traditional artificial neural networks do, synaptic delays are rarely incorporated into their simulation. We introduce a novel learning rule for simultaneously learning synaptic connection strengths and delays, by extending spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP), a Hebbian method commonly used for learning synaptic weights. We validate our approach by extending a widely-used SNN model for classification trained with unsupervised learning. Then we demonstrate the effectiveness of our new method by comparing it against another existing methods for co-learning synaptic weights and delays as well as against STDP without synaptic delays. Results demonstrate that our proposed method consistently achieves superior performance across a variety of test scenarios. Furthermore, our experimental results yield insight into the interplay between synaptic efficacy and delay.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_14984
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Extending Spike-Timing Dependent Plasticity to Learning Synaptic Delays
Dominijanni, Marissa
Ororbia, Alexander
Regan, Kenneth W.
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Machine Learning
I.2.6
Synaptic delays play a crucial role in biological neuronal networks, where their modulation has been observed in mammalian learning processes. In the realm of neuromorphic computing, although spiking neural networks (SNNs) aim to emulate biology more closely than traditional artificial neural networks do, synaptic delays are rarely incorporated into their simulation. We introduce a novel learning rule for simultaneously learning synaptic connection strengths and delays, by extending spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP), a Hebbian method commonly used for learning synaptic weights. We validate our approach by extending a widely-used SNN model for classification trained with unsupervised learning. Then we demonstrate the effectiveness of our new method by comparing it against another existing methods for co-learning synaptic weights and delays as well as against STDP without synaptic delays. Results demonstrate that our proposed method consistently achieves superior performance across a variety of test scenarios. Furthermore, our experimental results yield insight into the interplay between synaptic efficacy and delay.
title Extending Spike-Timing Dependent Plasticity to Learning Synaptic Delays
topic Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Machine Learning
I.2.6
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14984