Hebbian spatial encoder with adaptive sparse connectivity

Abstract

Biologically plausible neural networks have demonstrated efficiency in learning and recognizing patterns in data. This paper proposes a general online unsupervised algorithm for spatial data encoding using fast Hebbian learning. Inspired by the Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) framework, we introduce the SpatialEncoder algorithm, which learns the spatial specialization of neurons’ receptive fields through Hebbian plasticity and k-WTA (k winners take all) inhibition. A key component of our model is a two-part synaptogenesis algorithm that enables the network to maintain a sparse connection matrix while adapting to non-stationary input data distributions. In the MNIST digit classification task, our model outperforms the HTM SpatialPooler in terms of classification accuracy and encoding stability. Compared to another baseline, a two-layer artificial neural network (ANN), our model achieves competitive classification accuracy with fewer iterations required for convergence. The proposed model offers a promising direction for future research on sparse neural networks with adaptive neural connectivity.