[Cognitive processes and neuronal networks]

It is clear that computers are but a poor brain models: the nervous system has many "processors" (neurons) in parallel, whereas von Neuman's machines work sequentially on a single processor. In complex systems, emergent properties cannot be inferred from the behaviour of single elements. Anthills display collective "meaningful" moves, while each ant seems to obey local interactions only. Likewise, large parallel networks of processing elements elicit emergent properties. Like brains, some of them are self-organizing systems. In large parallel processing networks, each unit performs an elementary computation: adding inputs from other units. Large nets display surprising spontaneous computational abilities: associative memories, classes, generalizations may be seen as emergent properties of the network. Symbols are dynamical entities, whose handing is driven by local interactions of activation/inhibition of related representations. In such models, representations (memories) are distributed in the whole network, as stable configurations. Indeed, the basic properties of representation in connectionist models seem closer to human mental objects than the classic Artificial Intelligence concepts. Connectionist models have been used in many fields, namely simulations of real neural networks, pattern recognition and artificial vision, speech recognition, language understanding and knowledge representation, problem solving... Connectionist models have been thus used in neurobiology as well as cognition. One basic structure seems indeed able to account for a range of cognitive functions, from perception to problem solving and high level cognitive tasks. Nevertheless studies about "pathological" networks are yet rare, still an open field... We explore some of these fields.