Neural network models (Q1106766)

The remarkable processing capabilities of the nervous system must derive at least in part from the large numbers of neurons participating (roughly \(10^{10})\), since the timescales involved are of the order of milliseconds, rather than the nanoseconds of modern computers. We summarise common features of the neural network models which attempt to capture this behaviour and describe the many levels of parallelism which they exhibit. A range of models has been implemented on the SIMD (ICL Distributed Array Processor) and MIMD (Meiko Computing Surface) hardware at Edinburgh. Examples include: (i) training algorithms in the context of the Hopfield net, with specific application to the storage of words and text with content-addressable memory; (ii) the back-propagation training algorithm for the multi-layer perceptron; (iii) image restoration with Hopfield and Tank analogue neurons, and (iv) the Durbin and Willshaw elastic net, as applied to the travelling salesman problem.