An Active Hardware Dendrite Model Capable of Inducing STDP

Abstract

The brains of living organisms have excellent information-processing functions. Although various neuron models and artificial neural networks have been investigated, the information processing functions of biological neural networks have not yet been clarified. Recently, various research efforts have confirmed that dendrites perform an important role in brain information processing. Reportedly, STDP (Spike Timing Dependent synaptic Plasticity) is generated between inputs of pre-synaptic neurons and backpropagation of the active potential from dendrites of post-synaptic neuron, as revealed by physiological experiments. Using electronic circuits, we are constructing a hardware model with the characteristics of biological neurons.
In this paper, we propose an active hardware dendrite model inducing STDP based on backpropagation phenomena of biological dendrites. Results clarified the following two points.
1. The synaptic transmission efficiency of constructed model is changed by timing of the action potential of the input of pre-synaptic neuron and the action potential of backpropagation of the dendrite of the post-synaptic neuron.
2. When Δt is small, the amplitude change becomes large. When Δt is large, the amplitude change becomes small