# Advancing Deep Residual Learning by Solving the Crux of Degradation in Spiking Neural Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.07209 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.07209/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Dec 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [Going Deeper with Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.4842/) (2014)
- [Identity Mappings in Deep Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.05027/) (2016)
- [Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the Impact of Residual Connections on Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07261/) (2016)
- [Surrogate Gradient Learning in Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.09948/) (2019)
- [Spatio-Temporal Backpropagation for Training High-performance Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02609/) (2017)
- [Incorporating Learnable Membrane Time Constant to Enhance Learning of Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05785/) (2020)
- [Deep Residual Learning in Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04159/) (2021)
- [Going Deeper With Directly-Trained Larger Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.05280/) (2020)
- [Going Deeper in Spiking Neural Networks: VGG and Residual Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02627/) (2018)
- [Direct Training for Spiking Neural Networks: Faster, Larger, Better](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.05793/) (2018)
- [Spiking-YOLO: Spiking Neural Network for Energy-Efficient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.06530/) (2019)
- [Training Very Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1507.06228/) (2015)
- [RMP-SNN: Residual Membrane Potential Neuron for Enabling Deeper High-Accuracy and Low-Latency Spiking Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01811/) (2020)
- [Enabling Deep Spiking Neural Networks with Hybrid Conversion and Spike Timing Dependent Backpropagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.01807/) (2020)
- [Temporal-wise Attention Spiking Neural Networks for Event Streams Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.11711/) (2021)
- [Spike-FlowNet: Event-based Optical Flow Estimation with Energy-Efficient Hybrid Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.06696/) (2020)
- [Temporal-Coded Deep Spiking Neural Network with Easy Training and Robust Performance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.10837/) (2019)
- [DART: Distribution Aware Retinal Transform for Event-based Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10800/) (2017)
- [Deep Spiking Neural Networks for Large Vocabulary Automatic Speech Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.08373/) (2019)
- [Dynamical Isometry is Achieved in Residual Networks in a Universal Way for any Activation Function](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.08848/) (2018)
- [Spiking Deep Residual Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.01352/) (2018)
- [DashNet: A Hybrid Artificial and Spiking Neural Network for High-speed Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12942/) (2019)
- [H2Learn: High-Efficiency Learning Accelerator for High-Accuracy Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.11746/) (2021)
- [Rectified Linear Postsynaptic Potential Function for Backpropagation in Deep Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.11837/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [TCJA-SNN: Temporal-Channel Joint Attention for Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10177/) (2022)
- [Recent Advances and New Frontiers in Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.07050/) (2022)
- [Tensor Decomposition Based Attention Module for Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14576/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Despite the rapid progress of neuromorphic computing, the inadequate depth and the resulting insufficient representation power of spiking neural networks (SNNs) severely restrict their application scope in practice. Residual learning and shortcuts have been evidenced as an important approach for training deep neural networks, but rarely did previous work assess their applicability to the characteristics of spike-based communication and spatiotemporal dynamics. This negligence leads to impeded information flow and the accompanying degradation problem. In this paper, we identify the crux and then propose a novel residual block for SNNs, which is able to significantly extend the depth of directly trained SNNs, e.g., up to 482 layers on CIFAR-10 and 104 layers on ImageNet, without observing any slight degradation problem. We validate the effectiveness of our methods on both frame-based and neuromorphic datasets, and our SRM-ResNet104 achieves a superior result of 76.02% accuracy on ImageNet, the first time in the domain of directly trained SNNs. The great energy efficiency is estimated and the resulting networks need on average only one spike per neuron for classifying an input sample. We believe our powerful and scalable modeling will provide a strong support for further exploration of SNNs.