Introduction

Abstract

(Artificial) neural networks are information processing systems, whose structure and operation principles are inspired by the nervous system and the brain of animals and humans. They consist of a large number of fairly simple units, the so-called neurons, which are working in parallel. These neurons communicate by sending information in the form of activation signals, along directed connections, to each other. A commonly used synonym for “neural network” is the term “connectionist model.” The research area that is devoted to the study of connectionist models is called “connectionism.” Furthermore, the expression “parallel distributed processing” can often be found in relation to (artificial) neural networks.