Learning
- Learning is essential to the work on CAs.
- The only known learning mechanism in the brain is Hebbian learning
(though cell and axonal death and growth also could be considered).
- Hebbian learning states that two neurons (that are connected)
will tend to increase their synaptic strength if both are frequently
co-active.
- This leaves a lot of room for possible learning rules.
- Moreover it has to include inhibitory neurons, and could
contain a range of different rules for different neurons
or pairs of neurons.
- Increase the weight if both fire, decrease when one fires
and not the other. (If you don't decrease, the weights
increase indefinitely.)
- The simplest rule we use is a correlatory one.
- The weight becomes the value of the likelihood that the post-synaptic
neuron fires when the pre-synaptic neuron fires.
- This is a pre-not-post rule, and you could use the post-not-pre
rule. We've mostly used pre-not-post rules.
- The inhibitory correlatory values are -(1-p) where p is the
likelihood of the post-synaptic neuron firing when the pre-synaptic neuron
fires.