Abstract
Astrocytes play a central role in inducing concerted phase synchronized neural-wave patterns inside the brain. In this article, we demonstrate that injected radio-frequency signal in underlying heavy metal layer of spin-orbit torque oscillator neurons mimic the neuron phase synchronization effect realized by glial cells. Potential application of such phase coupling effects is illustrated in the context of a temporal “binding problem.” We also present the design of a coupled neuron-synapse-astrocyte network enabled by compact neuromimetic devices by combining the concepts of local spike-timing dependent plasticity and astrocyte induced neural phase synchrony.
Highlights
Neuromorphic engineering is emerging to be a disruptive computing paradigm in recent times driven by the unparalleled efficiency of the brain at solving cognitive tasks
The work presented in this article is guided by the observation that current neuromorphic computing architectures have mainly focused on emulation of bio-plausible computational models for neuron and synapse—but have not focused on other computational units of the biological brain that might contribute to cognition
The learning phase for the simulation is plotted as a function of timestep of the LLG simulation of the Magnetic Tunnel Junctions (MTJs) devices (0.1 ps)
Summary
Neuromorphic engineering is emerging to be a disruptive computing paradigm in recent times driven by the unparalleled efficiency of the brain at solving cognitive tasks. It is estimated that glia form ∼50% of the human brain cells (Möller et al, 2007) and participate by modulating the neuronal firing behavior, though unable to discharge electrical impulses of their own These glial-cells work in coordination with neural assemblies, to enable information processing in the human brain and performing incisive operations. There has been extensive literature reporting astrocyte computational models and their impact on synaptic learning (De Pittà et al, 2012; Manninen et al, 2018) Continuing these fundamental investigations to decode neuro-glia interaction, there have been recent neuromorphic implementations of astrocyte functionality in analog and digital Complementary Metal Oxide. The primary focus has been on a brain-emulation perspective, i.e., implementing astrocyte computational models with high degree of detail in the underlying hardware. We primarily consider emulating the neural phase synchrony effect of astrocytes and evaluate it in the context of a temporal information binding application
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