A Proof-of-Concept of a Bio-Inspired Neuromorphic Hierarchical System Behaving as an Associative Memory for Multisensory Integration

The brain's primary sensory processing areas often present a topographical organization and are distributed following hierarchical architecture, permitting the integration of the information in higher levels of its hierarchy: a process referred to as multisensory integration. A system with such characteristics naturally computes in a parallel and distributed manner and is based in associations between the different symbols built from our perceptions of the environment. In this work, we take inspiration from the sensory processing areas of the brain and propose proof-of-concept of a multi-layered neuromorphic system with parallel and distributed computing capabilities by means of simulation. The proposed neuromorphic architecture is constituted by identical self-organizing modules which are trained with on-line unsupervised-friendly learning rules, such as the spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). These self-organizing modules are constituted by oxide-based resistive random access memory (OxRAM) devices, which play the analog synaptic role. The different modules display a topographical organization according to the input dataset features they have been trained with and are organized following a hierarchical system. The system exhibits conceptual associative behavior between inputs with clustering capabilities, able to classify inputs which have never been seen before by the system, according to their similarity with the ones it has been trained with.