McCulloch-Pitts neuron

artificial intelligence The basic building block of

artificial neural networks. It receives one or more inputs

and produces one or more identical outputs, each of which is a

simple non-linear function of the sum of the inputs to the

neuron. The non-linear function is typically a threshhold or

step function which is usually smoothed (i.e. a sigmoid) to

facilitate learning.

(1997-10-11)