Motivations and List of Results

Simplifying assumptions and specific questions

By now the reader may feel that the issue of attractors has been some what belabored. This is unavoidable, given that attractors and their close relatives are the main message we bring from physics. The accompanying taste and style will ultimately be judged by the results and the clarity that can be produced as well as by qualitative novelty. This task is undertaken in this chapter and in Chapter 6, which are devoted to an exposition of tools and results. Admittedly, the results are transparent in situations which are not fully realistic. But once the model is formulated, with its extreme simplifications, it becomes clear that the qualitative nature of the difficulties involved in disentangling its properties are of a similar order to those which one would expect in a highly interactive network of realistic neurons. Whether cognition can be accounted for by either the dynamics of the realistic or that of the simplified network is, of course, a problem of a different magnitude. But if an aesthetic criterion is involved in selecting a mechanism for higher mental functions, this chapter should go a long way toward reinforcing ANNs' claim for the role.

Let us recapitulate the simplifying assumptions which will be most pertinent for the technical manipulations of the rest of this chapter:

• Neurons are discrete two-state elements.

• […]

This book summarizes in some detail the ideas, techniques and results developed in the last 5-6 years in the physics community about the collective properties of large assemblies of neurons. The subject has been, and still is, a source of great excitement among physicists the world over and new original ideas are generated incessantly. This enthusiasm has produced a wealth of new concepts and new detailed results which has not gone unnoticed outside physics departments. Biologists have begun to ask themselves whether the properties that physics anticipates in neural networks can indeed be observed and whether they provide useful theoretical guides for the empirical investigation of brain activity; computer scientists would not rule out these ideas as candidates for coherent parallel processing; psychologists and neurologists have been expecting some new useful metaphors for interpreting behavioral disfunction; cognitive scientists study the new concepts in their continued struggle with the elusiveness of processes of mind, even on the most elementary levels; and technologists have added, of course, Attractor Neural Networks to the list of future industries for sale.

One explanation for this impact of the study of neural networks seems to be in the type of new concepts that have been generated. They appear plausible upon introspection and they are based on elements with biological flavor. Another attraction is the clarity, the wealth and the detail provided by the quantitative analysis of the properties of such networks.

The Stochastic Process, Ergodicity and Beyond

Stochastic equation and apparent ergodicity

In Section 1.4.1 we have seen that the dynamics of an ANN is a march on the vertices of a hypercube in a space of N dimensions, where N is the number of neurons in the network. Every one of the vertices of the cube, Figure 1.13, is a bona fide network state. Let us first consider the case of asynchronous dynamics, Section 2.2.3, with a single neuron changing its neural state at every time step. In this case the network steps from one vertex to any of its N nearest neighbors. The question of ergodicity, and correspondingly of the ability of the system to perform as an associative memory, is related to the dependence of trajectories on their initial states. In other words, the initial states of the network are those states which are strongly influenced by an external stimulus. If the network were to enter a similar dynamical trajectory for every stimulus, no classification would be achieved. This will be the sense in which we will employ the term ergodic behavior. In terms of our landscape pictures, Figure 2.10 and 2.11, this would be the case of a single valley to which all flows. Alternatively, if trajectories in the space of network states depend strongly on the initial states, and correspondingly on the incoming stimuli, then the network can recall selectively, and have a variety of items in memory.

Situating Artificial Neural Networks

The role of hardware implementations

One obvious attraction of artificial neural networks is their potential technological applications, for which they serve as early feasibility studies. This is an issue that is better left at this stage to popular journalism. See e.g., [2,3,4]. Inasmuch as an individual neuron is interpreted as a computing device, artificial neural networks may provide answers to some of the outstanding questions of parallel computing – the coherent coordination of a multitude of processors. This motivation will also not be discussed here. Instead, such networks will be described below for several other reasons.

• To provide a physical environment in which any set of simplifying assumptions about neural networks can be literally implemented. This possibility was raised in Section 1.1.3 in the context of the methodological discussion about verifiabilty of the theoretical results. Some of it can, of course, be investigated by computer simulations.

• In addition, there are various uncontrollable variables which are naturally present in a real system, such as various random delays, inhomogeneities of components, etc. In this sense such real networks are one step removed from computer simulation.

• […]

Synaptic Noise and Synaptic Dilution

Two meanings of robustness

In Section 1.2.1, we listed some of the simplifying assumptions involved in the construction of the models discussed so far. Many more assumptions may have been detected by the reader along the way. No amount of lifting of simplifications will closely approximate the full glory of an assembly of real live neurons. Yet, as the grossest assumptions are replaced by more realistic ones and as the model is modified to account for more complex types of behavior without a significant loss in its basic functional features and in its effectiveness, the model gains in plausibility. To recapitulate our general methodological point of view: The lifting of simplifications is not performed as an end in itself. If the more complicated system functions in a qualitative way that can be captured by the simplified system, then the complication is removed and analysis continues with the simplified system.

We shall recognize two types of robustness, related to two types of results:

1. Robustness of specific properties to perturbation of the underlying parameters.

2. Robustness of general features to modifications required by more complex functions.

Since this chapter will be primarily concerned with robustness of the first kind we start by giving examples of situations of the second kind.

Philosophy and Methodology

Reduction to physics and physics modeling analogues

When physics ventures to describe biological or cognitive phenomena it provokes a fair amount of suspicion. The attempt is sometimes interpreted as the expression of an epistemological dogma which asserts that all natural phenomena are reducible to physical laws; that there is an intrinsic unity of science; that there are no independent levels or languages of description, only more or less detailed ones. The intent of this section is to allay such concern with regard to the present monograph, which remains neutral on the issue of reductionism. Yet, before explaining the conceptual alternative, of analogies to physical concepts, which has informed the work of physicists in the field of neural networks, it is hard to resist a few comments on the general issue of reductionism, as well as an expression of our own commitment.

It should be pointed out that the misgivings about reductionism cast many shadows. Biologists often still harbor traces of vitalism and feel quite uncomfortable at the thought that life, evolution or selection could be described by laws of physics and chemistry. Cognitive scientists resent both the reduction of cognitive phenomena to neurobiology[1,2] as well as to computer language[3]. A physicist who reads Fodor's proof of the impossibility of reduction between different levels of description should be troubled about the connection that was so ingeniously erected by Boltzmann and Gibbs between the macroscopic phenomena of thermodynamics and the underlying microscopic dynamics of Newton, Maxwell and Planck.

Motivations: Introspective, Biological, Philosophical

The introspective motivation

The type of neural network described in the previous chapter is a first prototype in the sense that:

• it stores a small number of patterns;

• it recalls single patterns only;

• once a pattern has been recalled, the system will linger on it until the coming of some unspecified dramatic event.

Such a system may provide some useful technical applications as rapid, robust and reliable pattern recognizers. Such devices are discussed in Chapter 10. It seems rather unlikely that they can satisfy one's expectations of a cognitive system.

Very rudimentary introspection gives rise to the impression that, with or without explicit instruction, a single stimulus (or a very short string of stimuli) usually gives rise to a retrieval (or recall) of a whole cascade of connected ‘patterns’. Most striking are effects such as the recall of a tune, which can be provoked by a very simple stimulus, not directly related to the tune itself. Similarly, rather simple stimuli bring about the recall of sequences of numbers, especially in children, or of the alphabet. Similarly, much of the input into the cognitive system seems to be in the form of temporal sequences, rather than single patterns. This appears to be accepted in the study of speech recognition (see e.g., ref. [1]), as well as in vision, where a strong paradigm has it that form is deciphered from motion (see e.g., ref. [2]).