As the name suggests, ANNs are inspired by their biological counterpart, although the reason is, perhaps, misunderstood. An artificial neuron, or what we will call a unit, is grossly simplified compared to a biological neuron, both in terms of functionality and structure. The biological inspiration comes more from the insight that each neuron in a brain performs an identical function regardless of whether it is processing sound, vision, or pondering complex mathematics problems. This single algorithm approach is, fundamentally, the inspiration for ANNs.
An artificial neuron, a unit, performs a single simple function. It adds up its inputs and, dependent on an activation function, gives an output. One of the major benefits of ANNs is that they are highly scalable. Since they are composed of fundamental units, simply adding more units in the right configuration...