AUTHOR=McKinstry Jeffrey L., Edelman Gerald M. TITLE=Temporal sequence learning in winner-take-all networks of spiking neurons demonstrated in a brain-based device JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neurorobotics VOLUME=7 YEAR=2013 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurorobotics/articles/10.3389/fnbot.2013.00010 DOI=10.3389/fnbot.2013.00010 ISSN=1662-5218 ABSTRACT=

Animal behavior often involves a temporally ordered sequence of actions learned from experience. Here we describe simulations of interconnected networks of spiking neurons that learn to generate patterns of activity in correct temporal order. The simulation consists of large-scale networks of thousands of excitatory and inhibitory neurons that exhibit short-term synaptic plasticity and spike-timing dependent synaptic plasticity. The neural architecture within each area is arranged to evoke winner-take-all (WTA) patterns of neural activity that persist for tens of milliseconds. In order to generate and switch between consecutive firing patterns in correct temporal order, a reentrant exchange of signals between these areas was necessary. To demonstrate the capacity of this arrangement, we used the simulation to train a brain-based device responding to visual input by autonomously generating temporal sequences of motor actions.