Artificial Neurons

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), as the name implies, try to replicate how a human brain works, and more specifically how neurons work.

A neuron is a cell in the brain that communicates with other cells via electrical signals. Neurons can respond to stimuli such as sound, light, and touch. They can also trigger actions such as muscle contractions. On average, a human brain contains 10 to 20 billion neurons. That's a pretty huge network, right? This is the reason why humans can achieve so many amazing things. This is also why researchers have tried to emulate how the brain operates and in doing so created ANNs.

ANNs are composed of multiple artificial neurons that connect to each other and form a network. An artificial neuron is simply a processing unit that performs mathematical operations on some inputs (x1, x2, …, xn) and returns the final results (y) to the next unit, as shown here:

Figure 6.1: Representation of an artificial...