Neuromorphic dendritic network computation with silent synapses for visual motion perception

Abstract

Neuromorphic technologies typically employ a point neuron model, neglecting the spatiotemporal nature of neuronal computation. Dendritic morphology and synaptic organization are structurally tailored for spatiotemporal information processing, such as visual perception. Here we report a neuromorphic computational model that integrates synaptic organization with dendritic tree-like morphology. Based on the physics of multigate silicon nanowire transistors with ion-doped sol–gel films, our model—termed dendristor—performs dendritic computation at the device and neural-circuit level. The dendristor offers the bioplausible nonlinear integration of excitatory/inhibitory synaptic inputs and silent synapses with diverse spatial distribution dependency, emulating direction selectivity, which is the feature that reacts to signal direction on the dendrite. We also develop a neuromorphic dendritic neural circuit—a network of interconnected dendritic neurons—that serves as a building block for the design of a multilayer network system that emulates three-dimensional spatial motion perception in the retina. A neuromorphic computational model based on multigate silicon nanowire transistors can perform dendritic computation by integrating synaptic organization with dendritic tree-like morphology and can be used to develop a multilayer network system that emulates three-dimensional spatial motion perception in the retina.