This work proposes a decision tree (DT)-based method for initializing a dendritic neuron model (DNM). Neural networks become larger and larger, thus consuming more and more computing resources. This calls for a strong need to prune neurons that do not contribute much to their network’s output. Pruning those with low contribution may lead to a loss of accuracy of DNM. Our proposed method is novel because 1) it can reduce the number of dendrites in DNM while improving training efficiency without affecting accuracy and 2) it can select proper initialization weight and threshold of neurons. The Adam algorithm is used to train DNM after its initialization with our proposed DT-based method. To verify its effectiveness, we apply it to seven benchmark datasets. The results show that decision-tree-initialized DNM is significantly better than the original DNM, k-nearest neighbor, support vector machine, back-propagation neural network, and DT classification methods. It exhibits the lowest model complexity and highest training speed without losing any accuracy. The interactions among attributes can also be observed in its dendritic neurons.

To construct a strong classifier ensemble, base classifiers should be accurate and diverse. However, there is no uniform standard for the definition and measurement of diversity. This work proposes a learners’ interpretability diversity (LID) to measure the diversity of interpretable machine learners. It then proposes a LID-based classifier ensemble. Such an ensemble concept is novel because: 1) interpretability is used as an important basis for diversity measurement and 2) before its training, the difference between two interpretable base learners can be measured. To verify the proposed method’s effectiveness, we choose a decision-tree-initialized dendritic neuron model (DDNM) as a base learner for ensemble design. We apply it to seven benchmark datasets. The results show that the DDNM ensemble combined with LID obtains superior performance in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency compared to some popular classifier ensembles. A random-forest-initialized dendritic neuron model (RDNM) combined with LID is an outstanding representative of the DDNM ensemble.

The dendritic neural model (DNM) mimics the non‐linearity of synapses in the human brain to simulate the information processing mechanisms and procedures of neurons. This enhances the understanding of biological nervous systems and the applicability of the model in various fields. However, the existing DNM suffers from high complexity and limited generalisation capability. To address these issues, a DNM pruning method with dendrite layer significance constraints is proposed. This method not only evaluates the significance of dendrite layers but also allocates the significance of a few dendrite layers in the trained model to a few dendrite layers, allowing the removal of low‐significance dendrite layers. The simulation experiments on six UCI datasets demonstrate that our method surpasses existing pruning methods in terms of network size and generalisation performance.

A dendritic neuron model (DNM) is a deep neural network model with a unique dendritic tree structure and activation function. Effective initialization of its model parameters is crucial for its learning performance. This work proposes a novel initialization method specifically designed to improve the performance of DNM in classifying high-dimensional data, notable for its simplicity, speed, and straightforward implementation. Extensive experiments on benchmark datasets show that the proposed method outperforms traditional and recent initialization methods, particularly in datasets consisting of high-dimensional data. In addition, valuable insights into the behavior of DNM during training and the impact of initialization on its learning performance are provided. This research contributes to the understanding of the initialization problem in deep learning and provides insights into the development of more effective initialization methods for other types of neural network models. The proposed initialization method can serve as a reference for future research on initialization techniques in deep learning.

Pruning is widely used for neural network model compression. It removes redundant links from a weight tensor to lead to smaller and more efficient neural networks for system implementation. A compressed neural network can enable faster run and reduced computational cost in network training. In this paper, a novel pruning method is proposed for a dendritic neuron model (DNM). It calculates the significance of each DNM dendrite. The calculated significance is expressed numerically and a dendrite whose significance is lower than a pre-set threshold is removed. Experimental results verify that it obtains superior performance over the existing one in terms of both accuracy and computational efficiency.