NEURAL NETWORKS

Artificial neural networks were designed to model some properties of biological neural networks, though most of the applications are of technical nature as opposed to cognitive models. Neural networks are made of units that are often assumed to be simple in the sense that their state can be described by single numbers, their "activation" values. Each unit generates an output signal based on its activation. Units are connected to each other very specifically, each connection having an individual "weight" (again described by a single number). Each unit sends its output value to all other units to which they have an outgoing connection. Through these connections, the output of one unit can influence the activations of other units. The unit receiving the connections calculates its activation by taking a weighted sum of the input signals (i.e. it multiplies each input signal with the weight that corresponds to that connection and adds these products). The output is determined by the..

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