Complexity of activity patterns in a bio-inspired Hopfield-type network in different topologies

Neural network models capable of storing memory have been extensively studied in computer science and computational neuroscience. The Hopfield network is a prototypical example of a model designed for associative, or content-addressable, memory. This model has been widely studied, and various versions have been proposed. Further, ideas and methods from complex network theory have been incorporated into artificial neural networks and learning, emphasizing their structural properties. Nevertheless, the temporal dynamics also play a vital role in biological neural networks, whose temporal structure is a crucial feature to examine. Biological neural networks display complex intermittency and, thus, can be studied through the lens of the temporal complexity (TC) theory. The TC approach look at the metastability of self-organized states, characterized by a power-law decay in the inter-event time distribution and in the total activity distribution or a scaling behavior in the corresponding event-driven diffusion processes. In this study, we present a temporal complexity (TC) analysis of a biologically-inspired Hopfield-type neural network model. We conducted a comparative assessment between scale-free and random network topologies, with particular emphasis on their global activation patterns. Our parametric analysis revealed comparable dynamical behaviors across both neural network architectures. Furthermore, our investigation into temporal complexity characteristics uncovered that seemingly distinct dynamical patterns exhibit similar temporal complexity behaviors. In particular, similar power-law decay in the activity distribution and similar complexity levels are observed in both topologies, but with a much reduced noise in the scale-free topology. Notably, most of the complex dynamical profiles were consistently observed in scale-free network configurations, thus confirming the crucial role of hubs in neural network dynamics.