Patent ID: 8463582

Claim:
An apparatus for modeling a non-linear system, comprising: a collection of two or more inputs configured and arranged to receive input signals; a collection of two or more outputs configured and arranged to output output signals; a processing unit configured to transform the input signals into the output signals, wherein the transformation is non-linear; and a data storage that stores characteristics of the non-linear transformation, including at least one of a first characterization of an impact of a first input signal received on a first of the inputs on an effect that a second input signal received on a second of the inputs has on an output signal output by a first of the outputs, and a second characterization of an impact of the first input signal on an effect that a third input signal on the first of the inputs has on the output signal output by a first of the outputs; wherein the characteristics comprise values that characterize the non-linear transformation in a multiple input single output model expressed as: w = u ⁡ ( k , x ) + a ⁡ ( h , y ) + n ⁡ ( σ ) , ⁢ y = { 0 when ⁢ ⁢ w < θ 1 when ⁢ ⁢ w ≥ θ , wherein x represents input spike trains, y represents an output spike train, n represents noise with standard deviation σ, h represents a feedback kernel that describes a transformation from y to an intermediate feedback variable a, k represents feedforward kernels that describe transformation from x to an intermediate variable u, and w represents pre-threshold potential.