The Hopfield Network

To understand how the program works you have to know exactly how the  Hopfield neural network functions. A Hopfield network is a single layer of artificial neurons with every neuron connected to every  other neuron, that is it a completely  connected  network.

Each neuron can be in one of two states - +1 or -1. You can think of  +1 as the neuron firing and -1 as it being relaxed.  Although all of the neurons are connected not all of the connections  have the  same  strengths  and it is by adjusting the  values  of  the strengths  that the network learns.

If the network consists of m neurons then the state of the entire network can be recorded in a single  array s with s[i] holding the state (+1 or -1)  of  the ith  neuron.  

In the same way the strengths  of  the  connections between  all  of the neurons can be stored in  a  two-dimensional
array  w  with w[i][j] holding the strength of  the  connection
between  neuron  i and neuron j.

The rule for whether  or  not  a neuron  fires  depends on the total of the inputs  received.  The total input to neuron i is simply: 

i.e. the  state  of  neuron j times the  strength  of  the  connection between  neuron i and j summed over all neurons. Notice that the connection w[i][i] is zero the connections are symetric
w[i][j]=w[j][i].

The update rule for the network is that the new state of the neuron is

s_i = 1 if a_i >0

   = -1 if a_i <0

The way that the Hopfield network is used to recall something  is
that an input pattern I is used to set the initial state of the
network,  that  is I is stored in s and then the  network is allowed to evolve. The update rule is repeatedly applied to all of the neurons until the values settle down and there is no change after an update.

It is a characteristic of a Hopfield  network that  the network will always evolve towards a fixed  state.  The final  state is taken as the output of the network i.e.  what  it recalls when the input (initial state) is I.

All  that  is  left is to describe how to  teach  the  network  a
pattern.  This  is  done by adjusting the  connection  matrix  by
adding  a increment to each term w[i][j].  The weight increment for the i,jth weight is

inc= s[i]s[j]

In other words the connection between  neurons  i and j are increased or decreases in proportion to the product  of the i and jth elements of the pattern that the network is trying to learn.

It  is  not difficult  to see that this rule produces a symmetric connection matrix.  We also have to remember to enforce the condition  that w[i][j]=0 to ensure that there is no connection between a neuron  and itself!  

This  learning  rule is generally referred  to  as  the 'Hebbian learning rule'. It is not the only one possible but  if you  use  it you can be assured that the network always  settles down  either to a fixed state or one that oscillates between  two fixed states. If you are interested in experimenting with  neural networks then you might like to try alternative rules.

You  can  get  rid of the irritation  of  oscillating  states  by performing  the update on the network asynchronously.

There are two ways of computing the new state of the network. You can take the strictly mathematical approach as contained in the equations given above and work out the new states for all the neurons based on all of the old values. If the network was realised in hardware this  would be equivalent to making all the neurons change  their state  at the same moment - synchronously. The alternative is  to allow  only  one  neuron  to  change  its  state  at  a  time   - asynchronously.  This means that at any given moment some of  the neurons will have new states and some old and so the input to any given neuron will be a mixture of both. Asynchronous updates  are to  be preferred because they are easier to program because  they require no additional storage and they can also be shown to avoid oscillation between final states.

Hopfield as Matrices

If you know your linear algebra the simplest way to appreciate the Hopfield algorithm is as a pair of simple matrix equations. If the state of the neurons is represented as a vector s, a vector with elements 1 or -1 and the weight matrix is W then the learning equation is:

where the operator is the outer product of vectors and s represents the state being remembered. The update is performed once.

The recall equation is:

where sign returns 1 or -1 depending on the sign of the result. This equation is iterrated until it converges to a final value of s.

Hopfield as Physics

How does all this relate to physics? The simple answer is that the neuron array is a spin glass. Each neuron can be thought of as a magnet with north up for a 1 and down for a -1. The weight matrix models the interaction between each of the "magnets" and the recall iteration changes the direction of the magnets to minimize the energy of the system. A spin glass moving towards lower energy is a cooling process and this is where the phsyics comes in.

Storage Capacity

You  can  see that when a Hopfield network learns a  pattern  the
information about that pattern is distributed across the  network
as  the strengths of the connection. This is very much  like  the
way  that  we  think the brain stores  information.  A  difficult
question to answer is how many patterns can be stored in a single network?  

The answer depends on how dissimilar the patterns  are.

In  this case the appropriate measure of similarity  between  two
patterns  A and B is the sum of all terms like A[I]*B[I]. If  you
know  a little statistics you will recognise this  expression  as
being proportional to the correlation between the patterns A  and
B.  It  has  been  estimated that the  storage  capacity  of  the
Hopfield network is roughly .145*m. In the case of our 64  neuron
network   this  gives  an  upper  limit  to  the  storage  of   9 uncorrelated  patterns. Of course in practice the patterns  would
be correlated and in this case the actual storage capacity.  This
is  relatively  inefficient  in that it can be  proved  that  the
optimal  storage  capacity for a network of M neuron is  2^m.  In
other words the Hopfield network is only 7% efficient. The key to
improving its performance is to tinker with the learning rule.