Neural cognitive maps (NCMs)

In this paper, we propose novel cognitive maps using neural networks named neural cognitive maps (NCMs). Owing to the usage of neural networks, the modeling and prediction abilities of the NCMs are greatly improved compared with those of the conventional fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs). In order to treat time series inputs effectively, each network receives the latest and the past outputs from all of the networks and is trained by backpropagation algorithm. In addition, a novel pruning method is employed to eliminate useless nodes and weights in each neural network. The pruning has two important effects: one is to improve the performance of the neural network; the other is to give useful information for users to estimate causal relations from the pruned neural network. Computer simulation results indicate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed NCMs.