Strong attractors of Hopfield neural networks to model attachment types and behavioural patterns

We study the notion of a strong attractor of a Hopfield neural model as a pattern that has been stored multiple times in the network, and examine its properties using basic mathematical techniques as well as a variety of simulations. It is proposed that strong attractors can be used to model attachment types in developmental psychology as well as behavioural patterns in psychology and psychotherapy. We study the stability and basins of attraction of strong attractors in the presence of other simple attractors and show that they are indeed more stable with a larger basin of attraction compared with simple attractors. We also show that the perturbation of a strong attractor by random noise results in a cluster of attractors near the original strong attractor measured by the Hamming distance. We investigate the stability and basins of attraction of such clusters as the noise increases and establish that the unfolding of the strong attractor, leading to its breakup, goes through three different stages. Finally the relation between strong attractors of different multiplicity and their influence on each other are studied and we show how the impact of a strong attractor can be replaced with that of a new strong attractor. This retraining of the network is proposed as a model of how attachment types and behavioural patterns can undergo change.

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