Patent ID: 7430546

Claim:
A system for information processing that progressively minimizes at least one error function by adapting a plurality of parameters, comprising: a plurality of signal processing nodes that receive a plurality of spike-coded node input signals to produce at least one spike-coded node output signal; a plurality of processing junctions disposed to interconnect said plurality of signal processing nodes to form a network, wherein each of said processing junctions converts a prejunction signal to a postjunction signal wherein the postjunction signal is calculated using one parameter out of said plurality of parameters; a plurality of network input connections that receive a plurality of signals for processing in said network; a plurality of network output connections to transmit at least one signal out of said network; at least one delay element to delay at least one of the signals processed by the network such that at least one of the signals in the network is influenced by at least two signal values obtained at different points in time; at least one learning rule operable to adapt the values of the parameters of the at least one signal processing junction wherein (i) said learning rule is operable to use at least one node output signal containing more than one spike, and (ii) the change of the parameter for the at least one signal processing junction is calculated using an approximation to the correlation between a prejunction signal representation and a node output signal representation of the node receiving the output signal of said junction, said correlation being adjusted by a learning rate defined as a scalar for which the optimal value depends on the firing rates of each prejunction signal processing node and each postjunction signal processing node.