Toward Next-Generation Biologically Plausible Single Neuron Modeling: An Evolutionary Dendritic Neuron Model

Conventional deep learning models rely heavily on the McCulloch–Pitts (MCP) neuron, limiting their interpretability and biological plausibility. The Dendritic Neuron Model (DNM) offers a more realistic alternative by simulating nonlinear and compartmentalized processing within dendritic branches, enabling efficient and transparent learning. While DNMs have shown strong performance in various tasks, their learning capacity at the single-neuron level remains underexplored. This paper proposes a Reinforced Dynamic-grouping Differential Evolution (RDE) algorithm to enhance synaptic plasticity within the DNM framework. RDE introduces a biologically inspired mutation-selection strategy and an adaptive grouping mechanism that promotes effective exploration and convergence. Experimental evaluations on benchmark classification tasks demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms conventional differential evolution and other evolutionary learning approaches in terms of accuracy, generalization, and convergence speed. Specifically, the RDE-DNM achieves up to 92.9% accuracy on the BreastEW dataset and 98.08% on the Moons dataset, with consistently low standard deviations across 30 trials, indicating strong robustness and generalization. Beyond technical performance, the proposed model supports societal applications requiring trustworthy AI, such as interpretable medical diagnostics, financial screening, and low-energy embedded systems. The results highlight the potential of RDE-driven DNMs as a compact and interpretable alternative to traditional deep models, offering new insights into biologically plausible single-neuron computation for next-generation AI.