Neuromorphic engineering

Neuroscience

Receptor

Biology

Synapse

Synaptic scaling

Emulation

Artificial intelligence

Psychology

Composite material

Materials science

Metaplasticity

Nonsynaptic plasticity

Computer science

Homeostatic plasticity

Homosynaptic plasticity

Synaptic plasticity

Neuroplasticity

Artificial neural network

Biochemistry

Social psychology

Plasticity

Nature Communications

Neuromorphic computing targets the hardware embodiment of neural network, and device implementation of individual neuron and synapse has attracted considerable attention. The emulation of synaptic plasticity has shown promising results after the advent of memristors. However, neuronal intrinsic plasticity, which involves in learning process through interactions with synaptic plasticity, has been rarely demonstrated. Synaptic and intrinsic plasticity occur concomitantly in learning process, suggesting the need of the simultaneous implementation. Here, we report a neurosynaptic device that mimics synaptic and intrinsic plasticity concomitantly in a single cell. Threshold switch and phase change memory are merged in threshold switch-phase change memory device. Neuronal intrinsic plasticity is demonstrated based on bottom threshold switch layer, which resembles the modulation of firing frequency in biological neuron. Synaptic plasticity is also introduced through the nonvolatile switching of top phase change layer. Intrinsic and synaptic plasticity are simultaneously emulated in a single cell to establish the positive feedback between them. A positive feedback learning loop which mimics the retraining process in biological system is implemented in threshold switch-phase change memory array for accelerated training.

Simultaneous emulation of synaptic and intrinsic plasticity using a memristive synapse