Information dynamics based self-adaptive reservoir for delay temporal memory tasks

Recurrent neural networks of the reservoir computing (RC) type have been found useful in various time-series processing tasks with inherent non-linearity and requirements of variable temporal memory. Specifically for delayed response tasks involving the transient memorization of information (temporal memory), self-adaptation in RC is crucial for generalization to varying delays. In this work using information theory, we combine a generalized intrinsic plasticity rule with a local information dynamics based schema of reservoir neuron leak adaptation. This allows the RC network to be optimized in a self-adaptive manner with minimal parameter tuning. Local active information storage, measured as the degree of influence of previous activity on the next time step activity of a neuron, is used to modify its leak-rate. This results in RC network with non-uniform leak rate which depends on the time scales of the incoming input. Intrinsic plasticity (IP) is aimed at maximizing the mutual information between each neuron's input and output while maintaining a mean level of activity (homeostasis). Experimental results on two standard benchmark tasks confirm the extended performance of this system as compared to the static RC (fixed leak and no IP) and RC with only IP. In addition, using both a simulated wheeled robot and a more complex physical hexapod robot, we demonstrate the ability of the system to achieve long temporal memory for solving a basic T-shaped maze navigation task with varying delay time scale.