Recruitment Learning of Boolean Functions in Sparse Random Networks

This work presents a new class of neural network models constrained by biological levels of sparsity and weight-precision, and employing only local weight updates. Concept learning is accomplished through the rapid recruitment of existing network knowledge – complex knowledge being realised as a combination of existing basis concepts. Prior network knowledge is here obtained through the random generation of feedforward networks, with the resulting concept library tailored through distributional bias to suit a particular target class. Learning is exclusively local – through supervised Hebbian and Winnow updates – avoiding the necessity for backpropagation of error and allowing remarkably rapid learning. The approach is demonstrated upon concepts of varying difficulty, culminating in the well-known Monks and LED benchmark problems