Biological Plausibility in Artificial Neural Networks: An Improvement on Earlier Models

Biological plausibility is a fact today to artificial neural network (ANN) community. Since researchers have not come to an agreement about this feature yet, they develop their own visions. Two of these are highlighted here: one is related directly to the cerebral cortex biological structure, and the other focuses the neural features and the signaling between neurons. This proposal departs from these approaches, considering that a biologically plausible ANN aims to create a more faithful model concerning the biological structure, properties, and functionalities of the cerebral cortex, not disregarding its computational efficiency. The choice of the models to be considered takes into account two main criteria: the fact they are considered biologically more realistic and the fact they deal with intra and interneuron signaling in electrical and chemical synapses. In addition to the features for encoding information regarding biological plausibility present in current models an alternative one is emphasized here: the timing of action potentials.