Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uwvax!goat.cs.wisc.edu!honavar
From: honavar@goat.cs.wisc.edu (A Buggy AI Program)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Re: Do Higher Order Neurons exist ?
Keywords: Neural Nets, High Order Networks
Message-ID: <8915@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 20 Oct 89 20:13:13 GMT
References: <384@cs.columbia.edu>
Sender: news@spool.cs.wisc.edu
Reply-To: honavar@goat.cs.wisc.edu (Vasant Honavar)
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 20

In article <384@cs.columbia.edu> camargo@cs.columbia.edu (Francisco Camargo) writes:
>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 ? "
 

There is evidence for multiplicative interactions on the dendrites of neurons
i.e., local regions of dendritic arbors can act like multiplicative units
(not necessarily sigma-pi) whose outputs are summed at the cell body.

For an excellent review of this and related issues, see the paper by
Gordon Shepherd titled "The significance of real neuron architectures for
neural network simulations" in "Computational Neuroscience" ed. E. Schwartz,
1989 (to appear).

Vasant Honavar