Reward-Modulated Local Learning in Spiking Encoders: Controlled Benchmarks with STDP and Hybrid Rate Readouts
arXiv:2603.00710v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper presents a controlled empirical study of biologically motivated local learning for handwritten digit recognition. We evaluate an STDP-inspired competitive proxy and a practical hybrid benchmark built on the same spiking population encoder. The proxy is motivated by leaky integrate-and-fire E/I circuit models with three-factor delayed reward modulation. The hybrid update is local in pre x post rates but uses supervised labels and no timing-based credit assignment. On sklearn digits, fixed-seed evaluation […]