Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) suffer from catastrophic forgetting, where the learning of new tasks causes the catastrophic forgetting of old tasks. Existing Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, including those using Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) and Hebbian Learning typically update their weights linearly with experience i.e., independently of their current strength. This contrasts with biological neurons, which at intermediate strengths are very plastic, but consolidate with Long-Term Potentiation (LTP) once they reach a certain strength. We hypothesize this mechanism might help mitigate catastrophic forgetting. We introduce Sigmoidal Neuronal Adaptive Plasticity (SNAP) an artificial approximation to Long-Term Potentiation for ANNs by having the weights follow a sigmoidal growth behaviour allowing the weights to consolidate and stabilize when they reach sufficiently large or small values. We then compare SNAP to linear weight growth and exponential weight growth and see that SNAP completely prevents the forgetting of previous tasks for Hebbian Learning but not for SGD-base learning.

Biological neurons have adaptive nature and perform complex computations involving the filtering of redundant information. Such processing is often associated with Bayesian inference. Yet most common models of neural cells, including biologically plausible, such as Hodgkin-Huxley or Izhikevich do not possess predictive dynamics on the level of a single cell. The modern rules of synaptic plasticity or interconnections weights adaptation also do not provide grounding for the ability of neurons to adapt to the ever-changing input signal intensity. While natural neuron synaptic growth is precisely controlled and restricted by protein supply and recycling, weight correction rules such as widely used STDP are efficiently unlimited in change rate and scale. In the present article, we will introduce new mechanics of interconnection between neuron firing rate homeostasis and weight change by means of STDP growth bounded by abstract protein reserve, controlled by the intracellular optimization algorithm. We will show, how these cellular dynamics help neurons to filter out the intense signals to help neurons keep a stable firing rate. We will also examine that such filtering does not affect the ability of neurons to recognize the correlated inputs in unsupervised mode. Such an approach might be used in the machine learning domain to improve the robustness of AI systems. Modern neural networks and deep learning systems still lack the generalization and self-learning abilities of natural brains. Also, deep neural nets (DNN) need a lot of labeled data. Being tuned for one particular task and dataset DNNs may not perform so well in real practical application. These are major obstructions in the widespread implementation of deep learning systems for practical use [1]. Yet, training of SNN still needs to be improved to be widely used.