Associative Networks and Cell Assemblies

Since the time of McCulloch and Pitts’ Theory (1943) there have been many attempts to model the flow of activity in neural networks. It is possible to simulate neural networks (of rather small size) on a computer, relying on quite reasonable — more or less simplified — assumptions on the dynamic behavior of single neurons. One problem is the arbitrariness of the design of the network (i.e. the connectivity matrix). Here many investigations have studied random connectivity (e.g. Anninos et al. 1970, Griffith 1971, Amari 1974, Dammasch and Wagner 1984) or connectivity that itself changes subject to certain rules (for an overview see Palm 1982)