About the Tutorial

Neural networks are parallel computing devices, which are basically an attempt to make a
computer model of the brain. The main objective is to develop a system to perform various
computational tasks faster than the traditional systems.

This tutorial covers the basic concept and terminologies involved in Artificial Neural
Network. Sections of this tutorial also explain the architecture as well as the training
algorithm of various networks used in ANN.

Audience
This tutorial will be useful for graduates, post graduates, and research students who either
have an interest in this subject or have this subject as a part of their curriculum. The
reader can be a beginner or an advanced learner.

Prerequisites
ANN is an advanced topic, hence the reader must have basic knowledge of Algorithms,
Programming, and Mathematics.

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Table of Contents
About the Tutorial .................................................................................................................................. i

Audience ................................................................................................................................................ i

Prerequisites .......................................................................................................................................... i

Disclaimer & Copyright ........................................................................................................................... i

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................. ii

1. ANN – BASIC CONCEPTS..................................................................................................... 1

What is Artificial Neural Network? ........................................................................................................ 1

A Brief History of ANN ........................................................................................................................... 1

Biological Neuron .................................................................................................................................. 2

Model of Artificial Neural Network ....................................................................................................... 5

2. ANN ─ BUILDING BLOCKS ................................................................................................... 6

Network Topology ................................................................................................................................. 6

Adjustments of Weights or Learning...................................................................................................... 8

Activation Functions ............................................................................................................................ 10

3. ANN – LEARNING & ADAPTATION .................................................................................... 11

Neural Network Learning Rules ........................................................................................................... 11

4. ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK – SUPERVISED LEARNING ................................................ 15

Perceptron .......................................................................................................................................... 15

Adaptive Linear Neuron (Adaline) ....................................................................................................... 18

Multiple Adaptive Linear Neuron (Madaline) ...................................................................................... 20

Back Propagation Neural Networks ..................................................................................................... 22

Generalized Delta Learning Rule .......................................................................................................... 25

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5. ANN – UNSUPERVISED LEARNING .................................................................................... 27

Winner-Takes-All Networks ................................................................................................................. 27

6. ANN – LEARNING VECTOR QUANTIZATION ...................................................................... 33

7. ANN – ADAPTIVE RESONANCE THEORY............................................................................ 38

Operating Principal .............................................................................................................................. 38

ART1 .................................................................................................................................................... 38

8. ANN – KOHONEN SELF-ORGANIZING FEATURE MAPS ...................................................... 42

Neighbor Topologies in Kohonen SOM ................................................................................................ 42

9. ANN – ASSOCIATE MEMORY NETWORK ........................................................................... 45

Auto Associative Memory ................................................................................................................... 45

Hetero Associative Memory ................................................................................................................ 46

10. ANN – HOPFIELD NETWORKS ........................................................................................... 48

Discrete Hopfield Network .................................................................................................................. 48

Continuous Hopfield Network ............................................................................................................. 50

11. ANN – BOLTZMANN MACHINE......................................................................................... 51

Objective of Boltzmann Machine ......................................................................................................... 51

12. ANN – BRAIN-STATE-IN-A-BOX NETWORK........................................................................ 54

13. ANN – OPTIMIZATION USING HOPFIELD NETWORK ......................................................... 55

Travelling Salesman Problem ............................................................................................................... 55

Solution by Hopfield Network ............................................................................................................. 56

14. ANN – OTHER OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES..................................................................... 58

Iterated Gradient Descent Technique .................................................................................................. 58

Simulated Annealing ........................................................................................................................... 59

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15. ANN – GENETIC ALGORITHM ........................................................................................... 60

Advantages of GAs .............................................................................................................................. 60

Limitations of GAs ............................................................................................................................... 61

GA – Motivation .................................................................................................................................. 61

How to Use GA for Optimization Problems? ........................................................................................ 62

16. ANN – APPLICATIONS OF NEURAL NETWORKS................................................................. 63

Why Artificial Neural Networks? ......................................................................................................... 63

Areas of Application ............................................................................................................................ 63

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 1. ANN – BASIC CONCEPTS

Neural networks are parallel computing devices, which is basically an attempt to make a
computer model of the brain. The main objective is to develop a system to perform various
computational tasks faster than the traditional systems. These tasks include pattern
recognition and classification, approximation, optimization, and data clustering.

What is Artificial Neural Network?

Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is an efficient computing system whose central theme is
borrowed from the analogy of biological neural networks. ANNs are also named as “artificial
neural systems,” or “parallel distributed processing systems,” or “connectionist systems.”
ANN acquires a large collection of units that are interconnected in some pattern to allow
communication between the units. These units, also referred to as nodes or neurons, are
simple processors which operate in parallel.

Every neuron is connected with other neuron through a connection link. Each connection link
is associated with a weight that has information about the input signal. This is the most useful
information for neurons to solve a particular problem because the weight usually excites or
inhibits the signal that is being communicated. Each neuron has an internal state, which is
called an activation signal. Output signals, which are produced after combining the input
signals and activation rule, may be sent to other units.

A Brief History of ANN

The history of ANN can be divided into the following three eras:

ANN during 1940s to 1960s

Some key developments of this era are as follows:

 1943: It has been assumed that the concept of neural network started with the work
of physiologist, Warren McCulloch, and mathematician, Walter Pitts, when in 1943 they
modeled a simple neural network using electrical circuits in order to describe how
neurons in the brain might work.

 1949: Donald Hebb’s book, The Organization of Behavior, put forth the fact that
repeated activation of one neuron by another increases its strength each time they are
used.

 1956: An associative memory network was introduced by Taylor.

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  1958: A learning method for McCulloch and Pitts neuron model named Perceptron was
invented by Rosenblatt.

 1960: Bernard Widrow and Marcian Hoff developed models called "ADALINE" and
“MADALINE.”

ANN during 1960s to 1980s

Some key developments of this era are as follows:

 1961: Rosenblatt made an unsuccessful attempt but proposed the “backpropagation”

scheme for multilayer networks.

 1964: Taylor constructed a winner-take-all circuit with inhibitions among output units.

 1969: Multilayer perceptron (MLP) was invented by Minsky and Papert.

 1971: Kohonen developed Associative memories.

 1976: Stephen Grossberg and Gail Carpenter developed Adaptive resonance theory.

ANN from 1980s till Present

Some key developments of this era are as follows:

 1982: The major development was Hopfield’s Energy approach.

 1985: Boltzmann machine was developed by Ackley, Hinton, and Sejnowski.

 1986: Rumelhart, Hinton, and Williams introduced Generalised Delta Rule.

 1988: Kosko developed Binary Associative Memory (BAM) and also gave the concept
of Fuzzy Logic in ANN.

The historical review shows that significant progress has been made in this field. Neural
network based chips are emerging and applications to complex problems are being developed.
Surely, today is a period of transition for neural network technology.

Biological Neuron
A nerve cell (neuron) is a special biological cell that processes information. According to an
estimation, there are huge number of neurons, approximately 1011 with numerous
interconnections, approximately 1015.

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Schematic Diagram

Working of a Biological Neuron

As shown in the above diagram, a typical neuron consists of the following four parts with the
help of which we can explain its working:

 Dendrites: They are tree-like branches, responsible for receiving the information from
other neurons it is connected to. In other sense, we can say that they are like the ears
of neuron.

 Soma: It is the cell body of the neuron and is responsible for processing of information,
they have received from dendrites.

 Axon: It is just like a cable through which neurons send the information.
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  Synapses: It is the connection between the axon and other neuron dendrites.

ANN versus BNN

Before taking a look at the differences between Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Biological
Neural Network (BNN), let us take a look at the similarities based on the terminology between
these two.

Biological Neural Network (BNN) Artificial Neural Network (ANN)

Soma Node

Dendrites Input

Synapse Weights or Interconnections

Axon Output

The following table shows the comparison between ANN and BNN based on some criteria
mentioned.

Criteria BNN ANN

Massively parallel, slow but Massively parallel, fast but

Processing
superior than ANN inferior than BNN

102 to 104 nodes (mainly

10 neurons and 10
11 15
depends on the type of
Size
interconnections application and network
designer)

Very precise, structured and

Learning They can tolerate ambiguity formatted data is required to
tolerate ambiguity

It is capable of robust
Performance degrades with
Fault tolerance performance, hence has the
even partial damage
potential to be fault tolerant

Stores the information in the Stores the information in

Storage capacity
synapse continuous memory locations

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Model of Artificial Neural Network
The following diagram represents the general model of ANN followed by its processing.

For the above general model of artificial neural network, the net input can be calculated as
follows:

yin = x1.w1 +x2.w2 +x3.w3 + … + xm.wm

i.e., Net input 𝑦𝑖𝑛 = ∑𝑚

𝑖 𝑥𝑖. 𝑤𝑖

The output can be calculated by applying the activation function over the net input.

Y= F(yin)

Output = function (net input calculated)

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