| The analysis of the computational models developed up to the present day show that the
artificial neural networks (ANN) have certain limits as information processing paradigms.
We believe that these limitations may be due to the fact that the existing models neither
reflect certain behaviours of the neurons nor consider the participation of elements that
are not artificial neurons. Since the ANN pretend to emulate the brain, researchers have
tried to represent in them the importance the neurons have in the nervous system (NS).
However, during the last decades, research has advanced remarkably in the field of
neuroscience, and increasingly complex neural circuits, as well as the glial system (GS),
are being observed closely. The importance of the functions of the GS leads researchers
to think that their participation in the processing of information in the NS is much more
relevant than previously assumed. In that case, it may be useful to integrate into the
artificial models other elements that are not neurons. These assisting elements, which
until now have not been considered in the artificial models, would be in charge of specific
tasks, such as the acceleration of the impulse transmission, the establishment of the best
transmission routes, the choice of the elements that constitute a specific circuit, the
“heuristic” processing of the information (warning the other circuits not to intervene in
the processing of certain information), and so forth.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of multidisciplinary science that comes mainly from
cybernetics and deals with the deeper study of the possibility — from a multidisciplinary,
but overall engineering, viewpoint — of creating artificial beings. Its initial point was
Babbage’s wish for his machine to be able to “think, learn, and create” so that the
capability for performing these actions might increase in a coextensive way with the
problems that human beings deal with (Newel & Simon, 1972). AI — whose name is
attributed to John McCarthy from the Dormouth College group of the summer of 1956
— is divided into two branches known as symbolic and connectionist, depending on
whether they respectively try to simulate or to emulate the human brain in intelligent
artificial beings. Such beings are understood as those who present a behaviour that,
when performed by a biological being, might be considered as intelligent (McCorduck,
1979; McCarthy, 1958). |
