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Conversion of numeric data to the spiking form and information losses in this process are serious problems limiting usage of spiking neural networks in applied informational systems. While physical values are represented by numbers, internal representation of information inside spiking neural networks is based on spikes — elementary objects emitted and processed by neurons. This problem is especially hard in the reinforcement learning applications where an agent should learn to behave in the dynamic real world because beside the accuracy of the encoding method, its dynamic characteristics should be considered as well. The encoding algorithm based on the Gaussian receptive fields (GRF) is frequently used. In this method, one numeric variable fed to the network is represented by spike streams emitted by a certain set of network input nodes. The spike frequency in each stream is determined by proximity of the current variable value to the center of the receptive field corresponding to the given input node. In the standard GRF algorithm, the receptive field centers are placed equidistantly. However, it is inefficient in the case of very uneven distribution of the variable encoded. In the present paper, an improved version of this method is proposed which is based on adaptive selection of the Gaussian centers and spike stream frequencies. This improved GRF algorithm is compared with its standard version in terms of amount of information lost in the coding process and of accuracy of classification models built on spike-encoded data. The fraction of information retained in the process of the standard and adaptive GRF encoding is estimated using the direct and reverse encoding procedures applied to a large sample from the triangular probability distribution and counting coinciding bits in the original and restored samples. The comparison based on classification was performed on a task of evaluation of current state in reinforcement learning. For this purpose, the classification models were created by machine learning algorithms of very different nature — nearest neighbors algorithm, random forest and multi-layer perceptron. Superiority of our approach is demonstrated on all these tests.

Working memory mechanisms in spiking neural networks consisting of leaky integrate-and-fire neurons with adaptive threshold and synaptic plasticity are studied in this work. Moderate size networks including thousands of neurons were explored. Working memory is a network ability to keep in its state the information about recent stimuli presented to the network such that this information is sufficient to determine which stimulus has been presented. In this study, network state is defined as the current characteristics of network activity only — without internal state of its neurons. In order to discover the neuronal structures serving as a possible substrate of the memory mechanism, optimization of the network parameters and structure using genetic algorithm was carried out. Two kinds of neuronal structures with the desired properties were found. These are neuron pairs mutually connected by strong synaptic links and long tree-like neuronal ensembles. It was shown that only the neuron pairs are suitable for efficient and reliable implementation of working memory. Properties of such memory units and structures formed by them are explored in the present study. It is shown that characteristics of the studied two-neuron memory units can be set easily by the respective choice of the parameters of its neurons and synaptic connections. Besides that, this work demonstrates that ensembles of these structures can provide the network with capability of unsupervised learning to recognize patterns in the input signal.