Application of Hierarchical Temporal Memory Theory for Document Categorization

Abstract: The current work intends to study the performance of the Hierarchical Temporal Memory(HTM) theory for automated classification of text as well as documents. HTM is a biologically inspired theory based on the working principles of the human neocortex. The current study intends to provide an alternative framework for document categorization using the Spatial Pooler learning algorithm in the HTM Theory. As HTM accepts only a stream of binary data as input, Latent Semantic Indexing(LSI) technique is used for extracting the top features from the input and converting them into binary format. The Spatial Pooler algorithm converts the binary input into sparse patterns with similar input text having overlapping spatial patterns making it easy for classifying the patterns into categories. The results obtained prove that HTM theory, although is in its nascent stages, performs at par with most of the popular machine learning based classifiers.