ABSTRACT Intracellular recordings in spinal cord motoneurons and cerebral cortex neurons have provided new evidence on the correlational strength of monosynaptic connections, and the relation between the shapes of postsynaptic potentials and the associated increased firing probability. In these cells, excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) produce crosscorrelogram peaks which resemble in large part the derivative of the EPSP. Additional synaptic noise broadens the peak, but the peak area -- i.e., the number of above-chance firings triggered per EPSP -- remains proportional to the EPSP amplitude. The consequences of these data for information processing by polysynaptic connections is discussed. The effects of sequential polysynaptic links can be calculated by convolving the effects of the underlying monosynaptic connections.

ABSTRACT A novel network type is introduced which uses unit-length 2-vectors for local variables. As an example of its applications, associative memory nets are defined and their performance analyzed. Real systems corresponding to such'phasor' models can be e.g. INTRODUCTION Most neural network models use either binary local variables or scalars combined with sigmoidal nonlinearities. Rather awkward coding schemes have to be invoked if one wants to maintain linear relations between the local signals being processed in e.g.

Previous work on nets with continuous-valued inputs led to generative procedures to construct convex decision regions with two-layer perceptrons (one hidden layer) and arbitrary decision regions with three-layer perceptrons (two hidden layers). Here we demonstrate that two-layer perceptron classifiers trained with back propagation can form both convex and disjoint decision regions. Such classifiers are robust, train rapidly, and provide good performance with simple decision regions. When complex decision regions are required, however, convergence time can be excessively long and performance is often no better than that of k-nearest neighbor classifiers. Three neural net classifiers are presented that provide more rapid training under such situations. Two use fixed weights in the first one or two layers and are similar to classifiers that estimate probability density functions using histograms. A third "feature map classifier" uses both unsupervised and supervised training. It provides good performance with little supervised training in situations such as speech recognition where much unlabeled training data is available. The architecture of this classifier can be used to implement a neural net k-nearest neighbor classifier.

The generalization replaces two state neurons by neurons taking a richer set of values. Two classes of neuron input output relations are developed guaranteeing convergence to stable states. The first is a class of "continuous" relations and the second is a class of allowed quantization rules for the neurons.

ABSTRACT The information capacity of Kanerva's Sparse, Distributed Memory (SDM) and Hopfield-type neural networks is investigated. Under the approximations used here, it is shown that the total information stored in these systems is proportional to the number connections in the network. The proportionality constant is the same for the SDM and HopJreld-type models independent of the particular model, or the order of the model. The approximations are checked numerically. This same analysis can be used to show that the SDM can store sequences of spatiotemporal patterns, and the addition of time-delayed connections allows the retrieval of context dependent temporal patterns. A minor modification of the SDM can be used to store correlated patterns. INTRODUCTION Many different models of memory and thought have been proposed by scientists over the years. The learning rule considered here uses the outer-product of patterns of Is and -Is.

ABSTRACT A single cell theory for the development of selectivity and ocular dominance in visual cortex has been presented previously by Bienenstock, Cooper and Munrol. This has been extended to a network applicable to layer IV of visual cortex 2. In this paper we present a mean field approximation that captures in a fairly transparent manner the qualitative, and many of the quantitative, results of the network theory. Finally, we consider the application of this theory to artificial neural networks and show that a significant reduction in architectural complexity is possible. A SINGLE LAYER NETWORK AND THE MEAN FIELD APPROXIMATION We consider a single layer network of ideal neurons which receive signals from outside of the layer and from cells within the layer (Figure 1). The activity of the ith cell in the network is c' - m' d J d is a vector of afferent signals to the network. Each cell receives input from n fibers outside of the cortical network through the matrix of synapses mi' Intra-layer input to each cell is then transmitted through the matrix of cortico-cortical synapses L. Light circles are the LGN -cortical synapses.

DCPS' memory scheme is a modified version of the Random Receptors method [5]. The symbol space is the set of all triples over a 25 letter alphabet. Units have fixed-size receptive fields organized as 6 x 6 x 6 subspaces. Patterns are manipulated to minimize the variance in pattern size across symbols.

Fernando J. Pineda Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins Rd., Laurel MD 20707 Abstract A general method for deriving backpropagation algorithms for networks with recurrent and higher order networks is introduced. The propagation of activation in these networks is determined by dissipative differential equations. The error signal is backpropagated by integrating an associated differential equation. The method is introduced by applying it to the recurrent generalization of the feedforward backpropagation network. The method is extended to the case of higher order networks and to a constrained dynamical system for training a content addressable memory. The essential feature of the adaptive algorithms is that adaptive equation has a simple outer product form.

ANALYSIS AND COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT LEARNING ALGORITHMS FOR PATTERN ASSOCIATION PROBLEMS J. Bernasconi Brown Boveri Research Center CH-S40S Baden, Switzerland ABSTRACT We investigate the behavior of different learning algorithms for networks of neuron-like units. As test cases we use simple pattern association problems, such as the XOR-problem and symmetry detection problems. The algorithms considered are either versions of the Boltzmann machine learning rule or based on the backpropagation of errors. We also propose and analyze a generalized delta rule for linear threshold units. We find that the performance of a given learning algorithm depends strongly on the type of units used.

Patterns of activity over real neural structures are known to exhibit timedependent behavior. It would seem that the brain may be capable of utilizing temporal behavior of activity in neural networks as a way of performing functions which cannot otherwise be easily implemented. These might include the origination of sequential behavior and the recognition of time-dependent stimuli. A model is presented here which uses neuronal populations with recurrent feedback connections in an attempt to observe and describe the resulting time-dependent behavior. Shortcomings and problems inherent to this model are discussed. Current models by other researchers are reviewed and their similarities and differences discussed.