Artificial Neural Networks

This chapter contains a description of the historical evolution of artificial neural networks since their inception, with the appearance of the first relevant learning method by Paul Werbos in 1986, which remained ignored until it was discovered simultaneously by three groups of independent researchers: LeCun (1986); Parker (1985); and Rumelhart, Hinton, and Williams (1986). The basic concepts and definitions are also described, followed by the different typologies and the most relevant learning algorithms, most notably the backpropagation algorithm. The most recent advances in artificial neural networks are also described, highlighting convolutional neural networks and deep learning.