Study of a New Neuron

Abstract

We study a modular neuron alternative to the McCulloch-Pitts neuron that arises naturally in analog devices in which the neuron inputs are represented as coherent oscillatory wave signals. Although the modular neuron can compute $XOR$ at the one neuron level, it is still characterized by the same Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension as the standard neuron. We give the formulas needed for constructing networks using the new neuron and training them using back-propagation. A numerical study of the modular neuron on two data sets is presented, which demonstrates that the new neuron performs at least as well as the standard neuron.

19 pages, 7 figures(not included) available upon request, postscript file