Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!columbia!cs!camargo
From: camargo@cs.columbia.edu (Francisco Camargo)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Do Higher Order Neurons exist ?
Keywords: Neural Nets, High Order Networks
Message-ID: <384@cs.columbia.edu>
Date: 19 Oct 89 15:38:52 GMT
Organization: Columbia University Department of Computer Science
Lines: 20

Hi there,

I'm trying to find evidence for the existence in the brain of SIGMA-PI units
as suggested in the PDP book. The real question is:

 "Are there neurons in  the real brain that support the current research
  on higher order networks ? "

I'm puzzled with the difficulty to implement simple nets capable of outputting
a continuous quantity  proportional to the product of its inputs. Even in the
simpler form (multiplying X and Y to produce K.Z for some K in R), this 
problem has taken hours in a back-prop simulator, yielding very poor 
precision even with 'apparently' complex nets (3 to 5 layers, 3 to 10 neurons
per layer).

Any comments are appreciated.


Francisco A. Camargo
camargo@cs.columbia.edu