A novel brain-inspired hierarchical perception-association circuit based on memristor arrays

In the brain, primary sensory cells can efficiently perceive multimodal stimuli, and then associative memory cells perform an advanced bidirectional associative memory function with perceived information. Here, a brain-inspired hierarchical perception-association circuit based on memristor arrays is proposed. Firstly, a memristive reservoir computing circuit is designed to simulate a low-level perceptual function, which mainly comprises dynamic analog reservoirs, memristor arrays, and analog integrators, enabling efficient spatio-temporal information processing. Secondly, a spiking bidirectional associative memory memristive circuit, as the core of the whole circuit, is proposed to mimic a high-level associative function, which mainly consists of memristor arrays, current amplifiers, and leaky integrate-and-fire neuron circuits, implementing multimodal associative learning. The simulation results in LTspice show that the modified neuron circuit exhibits 66× improvement in energy efficiency, and the proposed circuit can precisely perform the letter association and vision–audio association tasks in a spiking fashion with an average firing energy consumption of 230 pJ/spike, which has a great potential to be embedded in mobile robotic platforms.