Effects of pruning on phase-coding and storage capacity of a spiking network

Abstract

Synaptic pruning is a crucial process during development. We study the imprinting and replay of spatiotemporal patterns in a spiking network, as a function of pruning degree. After a Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity-based learning of synaptic efficacies, the weak synapses are removed through a competitive pruning process. Surprisingly, after this pruning stage, the storage capacity for spatiotemporal patterns is relatively high also for very high diluition ratio. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.