Synaptic Weights

• Typical topologies for neural simulations have weights.
• Without weights there is a coarse topology. Many researchers study coarse topologies.
• These can described by a connectivity matrix that has a lot of 0s.
• What is done with silent synapses is not considered.
• Many simulations works with well connected bidirectional topologies (e.g. spin glass models) that are not biologically plausible.
• Even for micro-columns, the bidirectionality is implausible and the well connectedness is at best an approximation.
• Weights add a considerable amount of information and description to the topology.
• Though the weights may be dynamic (particularly with short term potentiation), they provide a potentially accurate biological model.