Presynaptic stochasticity improves energy efficiency and helps alleviate the stability-plasticity dilemma

eLife

Angelika Steger¹  Frederik Benzing¹  Simon Schug² 

[1] Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland;Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich & ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland;

关键词: presynaptic stochasticity;    presynaptic plasticity;    energy efficiency;    lifelong learning;    sparsity;    stability-plasticity dilemma;    None;   

DOI  :  10.7554/eLife.69884

来源: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd

【 摘 要 】

When an action potential arrives at a synapse there is a large probability that no neurotransmitter is released. Surprisingly, simple computational models suggest that these synaptic failures enable information processing at lower metabolic costs. However, these models only consider information transmission at single synapses ignoring the remainder of the neural network as well as its overall computational goal. Here, we investigate how synaptic failures affect the energy efficiency of models of entire neural networks that solve a goal-driven task. We find that presynaptic stochasticity and plasticity improve energy efficiency and show that the network allocates most energy to a sparse subset of important synapses. We demonstrate that stabilising these synapses helps to alleviate the stability-plasticity dilemma, thus connecting a presynaptic notion of importance to a computational role in lifelong learning. Overall, our findings present a set of hypotheses for how presynaptic plasticity and stochasticity contribute to sparsity, energy efficiency and improved trade-offs in the stability-plasticity dilemma.

【 授权许可】

CC BY