The PDP approach

To

semantic cognition

James L. Mc Clelland and David E. Rumelhart pioneered the field of brain models based on parallel distributed processing and their book, Parallel Distributed Processing. Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition (the MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 1986), became the new bible for cognitive scientists who believed brain functioning much the same of a number of neural networks working together. In the past two decades the Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) research group developed very interesting strategies for the study of cognitive processes and new theories, which attracted many neuroscientists, cognitive neuro-psychologists and mathematicians. Jeoffrey Hinton, among others, gave them his precious contribution.

James Mc Clelland and Timothy Rogers wrote a review of the PDP approach to semantic cognition in the Nature Review Neuroscience (J. L. Mc Clelland & Timothy T. Rogers, The Parallel Distributed Processing approach to semantic cognition, Nature Review Neuroscience, 4, 310-322, 2003).

BM&L-May 2003