Refereed full papers (journals, book chapters, international conferences)

1975

A new hypothesis for the organization of synapses between neurons is proposed: ``The synapse from neuron x to neuron y is reinforced when x fires provided that no neuron in the vicinity of y is firing stronger than y''. By introducing this hypothesis, a new algorithm with which a multilayered neural network is effectively organised can be deduced. A self-organising multilayered neural network, which is named ``cognitron'', is constructed following this algorithm, and is simulated on a digital computer. Unlike the organization of a usual brain models such as a three-layered perceptron, the self-organization of a cognitron progresses favourable without having a ``teacher'' which instructs in all particulars how the individual cells respond. After repetitive presentations of several stimulus patterns, the cognitron is self-organized in such a way that the receptive fields of the cells become relatively larger in a deeper layer. Each cell in the final layer integrates the information from whole parts of the first layer and selectively responds to a specific stimulus pattern or a feature.