A real-time silicon cerebellum spiking neural model based on FPGA

Sensorimotor control and learning require the function of sophisticated neural system. Cerebellum is one such brain region which comprises more than half of the total neuron population in the entire brain. Capable of simulating a bio-realistic cerebellum model provides important information for neuroscience and engineering. Here we present a Network-on-Chip (NoC) hardware architecture for implementing a bio-realistic cerebellum model of passage-of-time (POT) encoding with 100,000 neurons. The results demonstrate that our implementation can reproduce the POT functionality properly. The maximum computational speed can reach 25.6 ms for simulating 1 sec real world activities. Our silicon cerebellum can be readily interface with in vivo or in vitro experiment and be adapted as a potential neuroprosthetic platform for future biological or clinical applications.

[1]  S. A. Bamford,et al.  A VLSI Field-Programmable Mixed-Signal Array to Perform Neural Signal Processing and Neural Modeling in a Prosthetic System , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering.

[2]  Shigeru Okuma,et al.  Cerebellar model arithmetic computer with bacterial evolutionary algorithm and its hardware acceleration using FPGA , 1999, IEEE SMC'99 Conference Proceedings. 1999 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (Cat. No.99CH37028).

[3]  Shigeru Tanaka,et al.  A spiking network model for passage-of-time representation in the cerebellum , 2007, The European journal of neuroscience.

[4]  J. Schmahmann Disorders of the cerebellum: ataxia, dysmetria of thought, and the cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome. , 2004, The Journal of neuropsychiatry and clinical neurosciences.

[5]  R. Ivry,et al.  The neural representation of time , 2004, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[6]  Tadashi Yamazaki,et al.  Neural Modeling of an Internal Clock , 2005, Neural Computation.

[7]  Tadashi Yamazaki,et al.  Realtime cerebellum: A large-scale spiking network model of the cerebellum that runs in realtime using a graphics processing unit , 2013, Neural Networks.