Recurrent neural networks that generalize from examples and optimize by dreaming

The gap between the huge volumes of data needed to train artificial neural networks and the relatively small amount of data needed by their biological counterparts is a central puzzle in machine learning. Here, inspired by biological information-processing, we introduce a generalized Hopfield network where pairwise couplings between neurons are built according to Hebb's prescription for on-line learning and allow also for (suitably stylized) off-line sleeping mechanisms. Moreover, in order to retain a learning framework, here the patterns are not assumed to be available, instead, we let the network experience solely a dataset made of a sample of noisy examples for each pattern. We analyze the model by statistical-mechanics tools and we obtain a quantitative picture of its capabilities as functions of its control parameters: the resulting network is an associative memory for pattern recognition that learns from examples on-line, generalizes and optimizes its storage capacity by off-line sleeping. Remarkably, the sleeping mechanisms always significantly reduce (up to ≈ 90%) the dataset size required to correctly generalize, further, there are memory loads that are prohibitive to Hebbian networks without sleeping (no matter the size and quality of the provided examples), but that are easily handled by the present "rested" neural networks.