ALSA: Associative Learning Based Supervised Learning Algorithm for SNN

Spiking neural network (SNN) is considered to be the brain-like model that best conforms to the biological mechanism of the brain. Due to the non-differentiability of the spike, the training method of SNNs is still incomplete. This paper proposes a supervised learning method for SNNs based on associative learning: ALSA. The method is based on the associative learning mechanism, and its realization is similar to the animal conditioned reflex process, with strong physiological plausibility and rationality. This method uses improved spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) rules, combined with a teacher layer to induct spikes of neurons, to strengthen synaptic connections between input spike patterns and specified output neurons, and weaken synaptic connections between unrelated patterns and unrelated output neurons. Based on ALSA, this paper also completed the supervised learning classification tasks of the IRIS dataset and the MNIST dataset, and achieved 95.7 and 91.58% recognition accuracy, respectively, which fully proves that ALSA is a feasible SNNs supervised learning method. The innovation of this paper is to establish a biological plausible supervised learning method for SNNs, which is based on the STDP learning rules and the associative learning mechanism that exists widely in animal training.