An Online Algorithm for Learning Selectivity to Mixture Means

Abstract: We develop a biologically-plausible learning rule called Triplet BCM that provably converges to the class means of general mixture models. This rule generalizes the classical BCM neural rule, and provides a novel interpretation of classical BCM as performing a kind of tensor decomposition. It achieves a substantial generalization over classical BCM by incorporating triplets of samples from the mixtures, which provides a novel information processing interpretation to spike-timing-dependent plasticity. We provide complete proofs of convergence of this learning rule, and an extended discussion of the connection between BCM and tensor learning.