Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity for Bernoulli Message Passing

Abstract

Bayesian inference provides a principled framework for understanding brain function, while neural activity in the brain is inherently spike-based. This paper bridges these two perspectives by designing spiking neural networks that simulate Bayesian inference through message passing for Bernoulli messages. To train the networks, we employ spike-timing-dependent plasticity, a biologically plausible mechanism for synaptic plasticity which is based on the Hebbian rule. Our results demonstrate that the network’s performance closely matches the true numerical solution. We further demonstrate the versatility of our approach by implementing a factor graph example from coding theory, illustrating signal transmission over an unreliable channel.

Publication
International Workshop on Active Inference 2025
Sepideh Adamiat
Sepideh Adamiat
PhD student

I am a PhD candidate at the Electrical Engineering department, Eindhoven University of Technology.

Wouter Kouw
Wouter Kouw
Assistant professor

I am an assistant professor working on active inference for mobile robots.

Bert de Vries
Bert de Vries
Professor

I am a professor at TU Eindhoven and team leader of BIASlab.