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An Introduction to Neural Networks falls into a new
ecological niche for texts. Based on notes that have been class-tested
for more than a decade, it is aimed at cognitive science and
neuroscience students who need to understand brain function in terms
of computational modeling, and at engineers who want to go beyond
formal algorithms to applications and computing strategies. It is the
only current text to approach networks from a broad neuroscience and
cognitive science perspective, with an emphasis on the biology and
psychology behind the assumptions of the models, as well as on what
the models might be used for. It describes the mathematical and
computational tools needed and provides an account of the author's own
ideas.
Students learn how to teach arithmetic to a neural network and get a
short course on linear associative memory and adaptive maps. They are
introduced to the author's brain-state-in-a-box (BSB) model and are
provided with some of the neurobiological background necessary for a
firm grasp of the general subject.
The field now known as neural networks has split in recent years into
two major groups, mirrored in the texts that are currently available:
the engineers who are primarily interested in practical applications
of the new adaptive, parallel computing technology, and the cognitive
scientists and neuroscientists who are interested in scientific
applications. As the gap between these two groups widens, Anderson
notes that the academics have tended to drift off into irrelevant,
often excessively abstract research while the engineers have lost
contact with the source of ideas in the field. Neuroscience, he points
out, provides a rich and valuable source of ideas about data
representation and setting up the data representation is the major
part of neural network programming. Both cognitive science and
neuroscience give insights into how this can be done effectively:
cognitive science suggests what to compute and neuroscience suggests
how to compute it.
The programs and documentation to accompany the book can be
found here.
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