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Pop Neuron - An Analog Artificial Neural Network

All Pop Neurons are modules for the stag able modular analog computer system Confetti and were designed by Wolfgang Spahn.

The Pop Neuron is a simple Schmitt Trigger (or inverting Schmitt Trigger) like the Confetti Schmitt Trigger board and the Inverting Schmitt Trigger board just with the option to add an Resistor-Capacitor-Circuit on the board. With this ability one can use the Pop Neuron module to build an analog neuron. In adding resistors and capacitors to it and depending on the jumper setting one can build an excitatory or an inhibitory neuron out of a Pop Neuron 001 module.
The Pop Neuron 002 and 003 can be used in the similar way, but have a prefixed behavior setting, they are always excitatory or inhibitory

With two different neurons one can build an oscillator, with some more one can build a whole analog artificial network.
These oscillator and network behave similar to the one described in "Dynamics of Pattern Formation in Lateral-Inhibition Type Neural Fields" by Shun-Ichi Amari.

This implementation of an analog neuron was described in "Implementation of Artificial Neural Oscillators" in 2009 by Pavlo V. Tymoshchuk, Yuriy I. Paterega and in "A Neural Network Based on Synchronized Pairs of Nano-Oscillators" in 2017 by Damir Vodenicarevic1, Nicolas Locatelli1 and Damien Querlioz.

One can use these neurons to generate pattern or sound for musical synthesizers similar like the one David Tutor used for his "Neural Synthesis" in 1993, based on the 80170NX Electrically Trainable Analog Neural Network chip by Intel.


Nearly 100 of the Pop Neuron were used for the installation Symbolic Grounding of Christian Faubel and Wolfgang Spahn.

Patching

For patching the Pop Neurons one can choose between the bus or patching wires. A combination of both is possible.
For an neural oscillator the output of the neuron has to be connected to the input of the other, and vice versa.

Modules

Sorry, unfortunately because of some issues with attribution and commercial (miss)use all Pop Neurons are currently offline.


The PCB version of the PN001 Pop Neuron the Pop Neuron Shenzhen Ready on kitspace.org.
Made by Marc Dusseiller and the SGMK.