Attention-Based Deep Spiking Neural Networks for Temporal Credit Assignment Problems

Accurate and efficient stock market index prediction: an integrated approach based on VMD-SNNs

The stock market index typically mirrors the financial market's performance. Hence, accurate prediction of stock market index trends is essential for investors aiming to mitigate financial risk and enhance future investment returns. Traditional statistical approaches often struggle with the non-linear nature of stock market index data, leading to potential inaccuracies in long-term predictions. To address this issue, we introduce the TCN-LSTM-SNN (TLSNN) model, a hybrid framework that integrates Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Temporal Convolutional Network (TCN) for robust feature extraction, within a highly efficient Spiking Neural Network (SNN) architecture. Additionally, we employ the Subtraction-Average-Based Optimizer (SABO) to refine the Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD) technique, thereby separating the periodic and trend components of stock indices, reducing noise interference, and establishing a decomposition ensemble framework to bolster the model's resilience. The experimental results show that the VMD-TLSNN hybrid model suggested in this study surpasses other individual benchmark models and their hybrid models in prediction accuracy. Additionally, it demonstrates notably lower energy consumption compared to other hybrid models.

A Hybrid Neural Coding Approach for Pattern Recognition With Spiking Neural Networks

Recently, brain-inspired spiking neural networks (SNNs) have demonstrated promising capabilities in solving pattern recognition tasks. However, these SNNs are grounded on homogeneous neurons that utilize a uniform neural coding for information representation. Given that each neural coding scheme possesses its own merits and drawbacks, these SNNs encounter challenges in achieving optimal performance such as accuracy, response time, efficiency, and robustness, all of which are crucial for practical applications. In this study, we argue that SNN architectures should be holistically designed to incorporate heterogeneous coding schemes. As an initial exploration in this direction, we propose a hybrid neural coding and learning framework, which encompasses a neural coding zoo with diverse neural coding schemes discovered in neuroscience. Additionally, it incorporates a flexible neural coding assignment strategy to accommodate task-specific requirements, along with novel layer-wise learning methods to effectively implement hybrid coding SNNs. We demonstrate the superiority of the proposed framework on image classification and sound localization tasks. Specifically, the proposed hybrid coding SNNs achieve comparable accuracy to state-of-the-art SNNs, while exhibiting significantly reduced inference latency and energy consumption, as well as high noise robustness. This study yields valuable insights into hybrid neural coding designs, paving the way for developing high-performance neuromorphic systems.