Neural network computation

Since 1982 there has been an enormous resurgence of interest in the possibility of making trainable, general purpose pattern recognition machines which are intended to mimic some of the processing abilities of human brains. A neural network 'computer' consists of a set of processing units (or artificial neurons) joined together by a set of weighted connections. Such networks are programmed by applying training patterns which fix the output states of some or all of the units, and a learning algorithm then adjusts the connections in response to the training patterns. The author provides an introduction to the field and to the current state of the art.