  We present a system comprising a hybridization of self-organized map (SOM)
properties with spiking neural networks (SNNs) that retain many of the features
of SOMs. Networks are trained in an unsupervised manner to learn a
self-organized lattice of filters via excitatory-inhibitory interactions among
populations of neurons. We develop and test various inhibition strategies, such
as growing with inter-neuron distance and two distinct levels of inhibition.
The quality of the unsupervised learning algorithm is evaluated using examples
with known labels. Several biologically-inspired classification tools are
proposed and compared, including population-level confidence rating, and
n-grams using spike motif algorithm. Using the optimal choice of parameters,
our approach produces improvements over state-of-art spiking neural networks.
