depression-biased reverse plasticity rule is required for stable learning at top-down connectionsdepression-biased反向塑性稳定学习所需的规则是自上而下的连接.pdfVIP

Depression-Biased Reverse Plasticity Rule Is Required for Stable Learning at Top-Down Connections 1 1,2,3 Kendra S. Burbank , Gabriel Kreiman * 1 Department of Neurology and Ophthalmology, Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 2 Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, 3 Swartz Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America Abstract Top-down synapses are ubiquitous throughout neocortex and play a central role in cognition, yet little is known about their development and specificity. During sensory experience, lower neocortical areas are activated before higher ones, causing top-down synapses to experience a preponderance of post-synaptic activity preceding pre-synaptic activity. This timing pattern is the opposite of that experienced by bottom-up synapses, which suggests that different versions of spike-timing dependent synaptic plasticity (STDP) rules may be required at top-down synapses. We consider a two-layer neural network model and investigate which STDP rules can lead to a distribution of top-down synaptic weights that is stable, diverse and avoids strong loops. We introduce a temporally reversed rule (rSTDP) where top-down synapses are potentiated if post- synaptic activity precedes pre-synaptic activity. Combining analytical work and integrate-and-fire simulations, we show that only depression-biased rSTDP (and not classical STDP) produces stable and diverse top-down weights. The conclusions did not change upon addition of homeostatic mechanisms, multiplicative STDP rules or weak external input to the top neurons. Our prediction for rSTDP at top-down synapses, which are distally located