McCulloch-Pitts Neuron -- Mankind's First Mathematical Model Of A Biological Neuron

It is very well known that the most fundamental unit of deep neural networks is called an artificial neuron/perceptron. But the very first step towards the perceptron we use today was taken in 1943 by McCulloch and Pitts, by mimicking the functionality of a biological neuron. Note: The concept, the content, and the structure of this article were largely based on the awesome lectures and the material offered by Prof. Mitesh M. Khapra on NPTEL's Deep Learning course. Basically, a neuron takes an input signal (dendrite), processes it like the CPU (soma), passes the output through a cable like structure to other connected neurons (axon to synapse to other neuron's dendrite). Now, this might be biologically inaccurate as there is a lot more going on out there but on a higher level, this is what is going on with a neuron in our brain -- takes an input, processes it, throws out an output.