Spiking neural network training using evolutionary algorithms

Abstract

Networks of spiking neurons can perform complex non-linear computations in fast temporal coding just as well as rate coded networks. These networks differ from previous models in that spiking neurons communicate information by the timing, rather than the rate, of spikes. To apply spiking neural networks on particular tasks, a learning process is required. Most existing training algorithms are based on unsupervised Hebbian learning. In this paper, we investigate the performance of the parallel differential evolution algorithm, as a supervised training algorithm for spiking neural networks. The approach was successfully tested on well-known and widely used classification problems.