Nociceptive Metaplasticity and Graceful Decay in Spiking Neural Networks: Towards Survival-Driven Continual Learning

We present Maya, a spiking neural network architecture implementing pain-induced metaplasticity and Vairagya-governed heterosynaptic graceful decay simultaneously on a shared synaptic weight matrix. Across a four-phase controlled experiment (N=3, deterministic across seeds), we demonstrate asymmetric synaptic protection at 66.6% elevated learning velocity on pain-tagged pathways. To our knowledge, no prior SNN architecture unifies nociceptive neuromodulation with heterosynaptic graceful decay in a single continuous-learning system. Codebase: https://github.com/venky2099/Maya-Nexus-Core