Cellular-Automaton-Like Neural Network in a Toroidal Vector Field

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This Demonstration shows a neural network evolving under rules similar to those for a four-neighbor outer totalistic cellular automaton. You can sample a variety of evolution rules exhibiting integrate-and-fire-like behavior. Red indicates cellular activity (a neuronal spike) while blue indicates inactivity. Color intensity encodes the value of a binary internal state variable. The weights between each cell and each of its neighbors have been adjusted to reflect Boltzmann-like transition probabilities appropriate for flow in a constant vector field on a torus (the angle of the field is an adjustable parameter in this Demonstration). Each network is initialized with a small region of activity, and neuronal activity patterns spread in ways that reflect the influence of the vector field.
Contributed by: Benjamin I. Rapoport (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
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This Demonstration was designed as part of work pursued at the 2008 New Kind of Science Summer School (NKS|Online).