RECAP: Local Hebbian Prototype Learning as a Self-Organizing Readout for Reservoir Dynamics

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Zhang, Heng
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Zhang, Heng
author_facet Zhang, Heng
contents Robust perception in brains is often attributed to high-dimensional population activity together with local plasticity mechanisms that reinforce recurring structure. In contrast, most modern image recognition systems are trained by error backpropagation and end-to-end gradient optimization, which are not naturally aligned with local computation and local plasticity. We introduce RECAP (Reservoir Computing with Hebbian Co-Activation Prototypes), a bio-inspired learning strategy for robust image classification that couples untrained reservoir dynamics with a self-organizing Hebbian prototype readout. RECAP discretizes time-averaged reservoir responses into activation levels, constructs a co-activation mask over reservoir unit pairs, and incrementally updates class-wise prototype matrices via a Hebbian-like potentiation-decay rule. Inference is performed by overlap-based prototype matching. The method avoids error backpropagation and is naturally compatible with online prototype updates. We illustrate the resulting robustness behavior on MNIST-C, where RECAP remains robust under diverse corruptions without exposure to corrupted training samples.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_06639
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle RECAP: Local Hebbian Prototype Learning as a Self-Organizing Readout for Reservoir Dynamics
Zhang, Heng
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Neurons and Cognition
Robust perception in brains is often attributed to high-dimensional population activity together with local plasticity mechanisms that reinforce recurring structure. In contrast, most modern image recognition systems are trained by error backpropagation and end-to-end gradient optimization, which are not naturally aligned with local computation and local plasticity. We introduce RECAP (Reservoir Computing with Hebbian Co-Activation Prototypes), a bio-inspired learning strategy for robust image classification that couples untrained reservoir dynamics with a self-organizing Hebbian prototype readout. RECAP discretizes time-averaged reservoir responses into activation levels, constructs a co-activation mask over reservoir unit pairs, and incrementally updates class-wise prototype matrices via a Hebbian-like potentiation-decay rule. Inference is performed by overlap-based prototype matching. The method avoids error backpropagation and is naturally compatible with online prototype updates. We illustrate the resulting robustness behavior on MNIST-C, where RECAP remains robust under diverse corruptions without exposure to corrupted training samples.
title RECAP: Local Hebbian Prototype Learning as a Self-Organizing Readout for Reservoir Dynamics
topic Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Neurons and Cognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06639