Spiking Neural P Systems With Communication on Request and Mute Rules

Spiking neural P systems with communication on request (SNQP systems) are neurally inspired computing devices, where a neuron actively seeks spikes from presynaptic neurons instead of passively waiting for spikes. In this work, we consider SNQP systems with mute rules (SNQPM systems), where mute rules have no communication functioning, namely the application of a mute rule only affects the number of spikes in the neuron where the rule resides, without effect on other neurons. It is demonstrated the computation capability of SNQPM systems with only mute rules does not exceed that of register machines with two registers, thereby not Turing universal. SNQPM systems are Turing universal when both mute rules and request rules are employed. Furthermore, two universal SNQPM systems with 7 neurons or 13 neurons are constructed as devices of number generating and function computing, respectively. Comparing to the universal SNQP system with 14 neurons and two types of spikes, SNQPM systems show the capability of trading-off mute rules and the types of spikes.