Short-term potentiation effect on pattern recall in sparsely coded neural network

It has been shown in studies of biological synaptic plasticity that synaptic efficacy can change in a very short time window, compared to the time scale associated with typical neural events. This time scale is small enough to possibly have an effect on pattern recall processes in neural networks. We study properties of a neural network which uses a cyclic Hebb rule. Then we add the short term potentiation of synapses in the recall phase. We show that this approach preserves the ability of the network to recognize the patterns stored by the network and that the network does not respond to other patterns at the same time. We show that this approach dramatically increases the capacity of the network at the cost of a longer pattern recall process. We discuss that the network possesses two types of recall. The fast recall does not need synaptic plasticity to recognize a pattern, while the slower recall utilizes synaptic plasticity. This is something that we all experience in our daily lives: some memories can be recalled promptly whereas recollection of other memories requires much more time. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.