Interdisciplinary Colloquium by Elena Agliari (Sapienza University Rome)

Title: Hopfield networks reloaded: reinforcement, forgetting, and the path to generalization

In this seminar, we will take a journey through the many facets of the Hopfield model, from its foundational role in associative memory to its more recent connections with modern machine learning. Starting from a concise overview of its defining features and applications, I will introduce a biologically motivated extension based on synaptic reinforcement and removal processes that occur during mammalian sleep, encoded here as suitable hyperparameters. By exploiting tools borrowed from the statistical mechanics of disordered systems, I will show that tuning these hyperparameters drives the network across a spectrum of behaviors, from memorisation to generalisation.