Learning spatiotemporal signals using a recurrent spiking network that discretizes time

PLoS Comput Biol. 2020 Jan 21;16(1):e1007606. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007606. eCollection 2020 Jan.

Abstract

Learning to produce spatiotemporal sequences is a common task that the brain has to solve. The same neurons may be used to produce different sequential behaviours. The way the brain learns and encodes such tasks remains unknown as current computational models do not typically use realistic biologically-plausible learning. Here, we propose a model where a spiking recurrent network of excitatory and inhibitory spiking neurons drives a read-out layer: the dynamics of the driver recurrent network is trained to encode time which is then mapped through the read-out neurons to encode another dimension, such as space or a phase. Different spatiotemporal patterns can be learned and encoded through the synaptic weights to the read-out neurons that follow common Hebbian learning rules. We demonstrate that the model is able to learn spatiotemporal dynamics on time scales that are behaviourally relevant and we show that the learned sequences are robustly replayed during a regime of spontaneous activity.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Action Potentials / physiology*
  • Computational Biology
  • Computer Simulation
  • Learning / physiology*
  • Models, Neurological*
  • Neurons / physiology*
  • Time Factors