Modular Neural Networks - Biological Basis

Biological Basis

As artificial neural network research progresses, it is appropriate that artificial neural networks continue to draw on their biological inspiration and emulate the segmentation and modularization found in the brain. The brain, for example, divides the complex task of visual perception into many subtasks. Within a part of the brain, called the thalamus, lies the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) which is divided into different layers that separately process color and contrast: both major components of vision. After the LGN processes each component in parallel, it passes the result to another region to compile the results.

Certainly some tasks that the brain handles, like vision, have a hierarchy of sub-networks. However, it is not clear whether there is some intermediary which ties these separate processes together on a grander scale. Rather, as the tasks grow more abstract, the isolation and compartmentalization breaks down between the modules and they begin to communicate back and forth. At this point, the modular neural network analogy is either incomplete or inadequate.