Memristive Circuit Implementation of Operant Cascaded With Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning (CC) and operant conditioning (OC), also known as associative memory, are two of the most fundamental and critical learning mechanisms in the biological brain. However, the existing designs of associative memory memristive circuits mainly focus on CC, and few studies have used memristors to imitate OC at the behavioral level, as well as the OC-CC cascaded associative memories that are widespread in biological learning processes. This work proposes an OC-CC cascaded circuit composed of OC and CC circuits. With the OC memristive circuit, bio-like functions such as random exploration, feedback learning, experience memory, and experience-based decision-making are achieved, which enables the circuit to continuously reshape its own memories and actions to adapt to changing environments. By cascading it with the CC memristive circuit that has the functions of associative learning, forgetting, generalization, and differentiation, the OC-CC cascaded circuit implements richer associative memories and has stronger environmental adaptability. Finally, the proposed circuits can perform on-line in-situ learning and in-memory computing. This is a more brain-like processing method, which is different from the von Neumann architecture. The simulation results of the proposed circuits in PSPICE show that they can simulate the above functions and have advantages in power consumption and hardware overhead. This work provides a possible realization idea for large-scale bionic learning.