The nonnegative Boltzmann machine (NNBM) is a recurrent neural net(cid:173) work model that can describe multimodal nonnegative data. Application of maximum likelihood estimation to this model gives a learning rule that is analogous to the binary Boltzmann machine. We examine the utility of the mean field approximation for the NNBM, and describe how Monte Carlo sampling techniques can be used to learn its parameters. Reflec(cid:173) tive slice sampling is particularly well-suited for this distribution, and can efficiently be implemented to sample the distribution. We illustrate learning of the NNBM on a transiationally invariant distribution, as well as on a generative model for images of human faces.

Nonnegative Boltzmann machines (NNBMs) are recurrent probabilistic neural network models that can describe multi-modal nonnegative data. NNBMs form rectified Gaussian distributions that appear in biological neural network models, positive matrix factorization, nonnegative matrix factorization, and so on. In this paper, an effective inference method for NNBMs is proposed that uses the mean-field method, referred to as the Thouless--Anderson--Palmer equation, and the diagonal consistency method, which was recently proposed.