Implementing and morphing Boolean gates with adaptive synchronization: The case of spiking neurons

Abstract

Boolean logic is the paradigm through which modern computation is performed in silica. When nonlinear dynamical systems are interacting in a directed graph, we show that computation abilities emerge spontaneously from adaptive synchronization, which actually can emulate Boolean logic. Precisely, we demonstrate that a single dynamical unit, a spiking neuron modeled by the Hodgkin-Huxley model, can be used as the basic computational unit for realizing all the 16 Boolean logical gates with two inputs and one output, when it is coupled adaptively in a way that depends on the synchronization level between the two input signals. This is realized by means of a set of parameters, whose tuning offers even the possibility of constructing a morphing gate, i.e., a logical gate able to switch efficiently from one to another of such 16 Boolean gates. Extensive simulations demonstrate the efficiency and the accuracy of the proposed computational paradigm.