title: Emulating short-term synaptic dynamics with memristive devices.
abstract: Neuromorphic architectures offer great promise for achieving computation capacities beyond conventional Von Neumann machines. The essential elements for achieving this vision are highly scalable synaptic mimics that do not undermine biological fidelity. Here we demonstrate that single solid-state TiO2 memristors can exhibit non-associative plasticity phenomena observed in biological synapses, supported by their metastable memory state transition properties. We show that, contrary to conventional uses of solid-state memory, the existence of rate-limiting volatility is a key feature for capturing short-term synaptic dynamics. We also show how the temporal dynamics of our prototypes can be exploited to implement spatio-temporal computation, demonstrating the memristors full potential for building biophysically realistic neural processing systems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.
authors.forename: Radu
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Berdan
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK.
authors.forename: Eleni
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Vasilaki
authors.affiliation: Nano Research Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK.
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Khiat
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, CH.
authors.forename: Giacomo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Indiveri
authors.affiliation: Nano Research Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK.
authors.forename: Alexandru
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Serb
authors.affiliation: Nano Research Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK.
authors.forename: Themistoklis
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Prodromakis
mesh_terms: D032701:Biomimetics; D017097:Electric Impedance; D055664:Electrochemical Techniques; D008959:Models, Neurological; D062211:Spatio-Temporal Analysis; D009435:Synaptic Transmission; D014025:Titanium / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: C009495:titanium dioxide; D014025:Titanium