Introduction to deep learning
Deep learning is based on fundamental concepts that find their roots early in the 20th century – the wiring between neurons. Neurons communicate chemically and electrically through so-called neurites.
This wiring was first described and drawn by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a Spanish neuroscientist. He charted the anatomy of the brain and the structure of neural networks in the brain. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1906, which he shared with Camillo Golgi, who invented the stains for neurons based on potassium dichromate and silver nitrate that Ramón y Cajal applied in his microscopy studies.
The chart below is just one of his elaborate drawings of the arborization of neural connections (called neurites – dendrites and axons) between neurons in the brain (source Wikimedia Commons):
Figure 10.1: Ramon y Cajal's drawing of networks of neurons in the brain
In the schematic, you can appreciate...
