Abstract
Computational vision systems that are trained with deep learning have recently matched human performance (Hinton et al). However, while deep learning typically requires tens or hundreds of thousands of labelled examples, humans can learn a task or stimulus with only a few repetitions. For example, a 2015 study by Andrillon et al. showed that human listeners can learn complicated random auditory noises after only a few repetitions, with each repetition invoking a larger and larger EEG activity than the previous. In addition, a 2015 study by Martin et al. showed that only 10 minutes of visual experience of a novel object class was required to change early EEG potentials, improve saccadic reaction times, and increase saccade accuracies for the particular object trained. How might such ultra-rapid learning actually be accomplished by the cortex? Here, we propose a simple unsupervised neural model based on spike timing dependent plasticity, which learns spatiotemporal patterns in visual or auditory stimuli with only a few repetitions. The model is attractive for applications because it is simple enough to allow the simulation of very large numbers of cortical neurons in real time. Theoretically, the model provides a plausible example of how the brain may accomplish rapid learning of repeating visual or auditory patterns using only a few examples.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2017