The first case shows recurrent activity, while the second case is non-recurrent or feed forward. The polarity of these terms signify excitatory or inhibitory interactions. Shunting network equations can be derived from various sources such as the passive membrane equation with synaptic interaction (Grossberg 1973, Pinter 1983), models of dendritic interaction (RaIl 1977), or experiments on motoneurons (Ellias and Grossberg 1975).

The first case shows recurrent activity, while the second case is non-recurrent or feed forward. The polarity of these terms signify excitatory or inhibitory interactions. Shunting network equations can be derived from various sources such as the passive membrane equation with synaptic interaction (Grossberg 1973, Pinter 1983), models of dendritic interaction (RaIl 1977), or experiments on motoneurons (Ellias and Grossberg 1975). While the exact mechanisms of synaptic interactions are not known in every individual case,neurobiological evidence of shunting interactions appear in several 696 Nabet, Darling and Pinter areas such as sensory systems, cerebellum, neocortex, and hippocampus (Grossberg 1973, Pinter 1987). In addition to neurobiology, these networks have been used to successfully explain data from disciplines ranging from population biology (Lotka 1956) to psychophysics and behavioral psychology (Grossberg 1983). Shunting nets have important advantages over additive models which lack the extra nonlinearityintroduced by the multiplicative terms.