ADAPTIVE PHOTOREFRACTIVE NEURONS FOR SELF-ORGANIZING NETWORKS

Analogies between some learning laws widely used in self-organizing ne ural networks and the dynamics of hologram creation in photorefractive materials are outlined. Some possible optical implementations of opti cal neuron units with photorefractive crystals are proposed. These sys tems present the key characteristics of the adaptive units required fo r the realization of self-organizing networks. The characteristics, su ch as feature extraction in a set of images, are experimentally demons trated.