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Cited by 1,386

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 33 of the 33 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Deep learning in spiking neural networks

Open access
Tavanaei, Amirhossein, Ghodrati, Masoud, Kheradpisheh, Saeed Reza, Masquelier, Timothée, Maida, Anthony·2019·Neural Networks

Abstract

In recent years, deep learning has revolutionized the field of machine learning, for computer vision in particular. In this approach, a deep (multilayer) artificial neural network (ANN) is trained, most often in a supervised manner using backpropagation. Vast amounts of labeled training examples are required, but the resulting classification accuracy is truly impressive, sometimes outperforming humans. Neurons in an ANN are characterized by a single, static, continuous-valued activation. Yet biological neurons use discrete spikes to compute and transmit information, and the spike times, in addition to the spike rates, matter. Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are thus more biologically realistic than ANNs, and are arguably the only viable option if one wants to understand how the brain computes at the neuronal description level. The spikes of biological neurons are sparse in time and space, and event-driven. Combined with bio-plausible local learning rules, this makes it easier to build low-power, neuromorphic hardware for SNNs. However, training deep SNNs remains a challenge. Spiking neurons' transfer function is usually non-differentiable, which prevents using backpropagation. Here we review recent supervised and unsupervised methods to train deep SNNs, and compare them in terms of accuracy and computational cost. The emerging picture is that SNNs still lag behind ANNs in terms of accuracy, but the gap is decreasing, and can even vanish on some tasks, while SNNs typically require many fewer operations and are the better candidates to process spatio-temporal data.

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Metadata

Authors
Tavanaei, A., Ghodrati, M., Kheradpisheh, S. R., Masquelier, T., & Maida, A.
Venue
Neural Networks
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2019-03
Volume
111
Pages
47-63
ISSN
0893-6080 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2798878556
Cited by
1,386
References
33
FWCI
34.53
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Deep learning in spiking neural networks. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.neunet.2018.12.002
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Tavanaei, A., Ghodrati, M., Kheradpisheh, S. R., Masquelier, T., & Maida, A. (2019). Deep learning in spiking neural networks. Neural Networks. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2018.12.002

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