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McCulloch's neurons revisited

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 686))

Abstract

The 1943 McCulloch and Pitts seminal paper on artificial neurons (ANs) provided the stimulus for early neural network research. However, McCulloch's work in the 50's has been mainly overlooked. The importance of this later work is shown in this paper not only because McCulloch's neuron design was significantly more powerful than either the Perception or the Adeline, but also because of its ability to satisfy the XOR function 12 years before the publication of Minsky and Papert's book, Perceptrons. The similarities between McCulloch's work in the 50's and 60's and more current AN research are also identified here. Some rudimentary experiments with AN design using a delta learning rule are also included. It is hoped that by recasting McCulloch's and the author's early work in terms of current technology, further research will be stimulated in designing efficient artificial neural systems that provide the stability and reliability of biological systems. These were the goals of McCulloch's original work.

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José Mira Joan Cabestany Alberto Prieto

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© 1993 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Scott, R.J. (1993). McCulloch's neurons revisited. In: Mira, J., Cabestany, J., Prieto, A. (eds) New Trends in Neural Computation. IWANN 1993. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 686. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-56798-4_125

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-56798-4_125

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-56798-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47741-9

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