Spike-Timing-Dependent Hebbian Plasticity as Temporal Difference Learning

  • Authors:
  • Rajesh P. N. Rao;Terrence J. Sejnowski

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-2350, U.S.A.;Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA 92037, U.S.A., and Department of Biology, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92037, U.S.A.

  • Venue:
  • Neural Computation
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

A spike-timing-dependent Hebbian mechanism governs the plasticity of recurrent excitatory synapses in the neocortex: synapses that are activated a few milliseconds before a postsynaptic spike are potentiated, while those that are activated a few milliseconds after are depressed. We show that such a mechanism can implement a form of temporal difference learning for prediction of input sequences. Using a biophysical model of a cortical neuron, we show that a temporal difference rule used in conjunction with dendritic backpropagating action potentials reproduces the temporally asymmetric window of Hebbian plasticity observed physio-logically. Furthermore, the size and shape of the window vary with the distance of the synapse from the soma. Using a simple example, we show how a spike-timing-based temporal difference learning rule can allow a network of neocortical neurons to predict an input a few milliseconds before the input's expected arrival.