Noisy softplus: A biology inspired activation function

Qian Liu*, Steve Furber

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

The Spiking Neural Network (SNN) has not achieved the recognition/classification performance of its non-spiking competitor, the Artificial Neural Network(ANN), particularly when used in deep neural networks. The mapping of a well-trained ANN to an SNN is a hot topic in this field, especially using spiking neurons with biological characteristics. This paper proposes a new biologically-inspired activation function, Noisy Softplus, which is well-matched to the response function of LIF (Leaky Integrate-and-Fire) neurons. A convolutional network (ConvNet) was trained on the MNIST database with Noisy Softplus units and converted to an SNN while maintaining a close classification accuracy. This result demonstrates the equivalent recognition capability of the more biologically-realistic SNNs and bring biological features to the activation units in ANNs.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationNeural Information Processing - 23rd International Conference, ICONIP 2016, Proceedings
Place of PublicationCham
PublisherSpringer Nature
Pages405-412
Number of pages8
ISBN (Print)9783319466804
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016
Event23rd International Conference on Neural Information Processing, ICONIP 2016 - Kyoto, Japan
Duration: 16 Oct 201621 Oct 2016

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume9950 LNCS
ISSN (Print)03029743
ISSN (Electronic)16113349

Conference

Conference23rd International Conference on Neural Information Processing, ICONIP 2016
Country/TerritoryJapan
CityKyoto
Period16/10/1621/10/16

Keywords

  • Activation function
  • Biologically-inspired
  • LIF neurons
  • Noisy softplus
  • Spiking neural network

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