Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 13 (NIPS 2000)
Shih-Chii Liu, Bradley Minch
In this work, we explore homeostasis in a silicon integrate-and-fire neu(cid:173) ron. The neuron adapts its firing rate over long time periods on the order of seconds or minutes so that it returns to its spontaneous firing rate after a lasting perturbation. Homeostasis is implemented via two schemes. One scheme looks at the presynaptic activity and adapts the synaptic weight depending on the presynaptic spiking rate. The second scheme adapts the synaptic "threshold" depending on the neuron's activity. The threshold is lowered if the neuron's activity decreases over a long time and is increased for prolonged increase in postsynaptic activity. Both these mechanisms for adaptation use floating-gate technology. The re(cid:173) sults shown here are measured from a chip fabricated in a 2-J.lm CMOS process.