RENDICONTI DEL CIRCOLO MATEMATICO DI PALERMO Serie If, Tomo XLIV (1995), pp. 506

R E C E N S I O N I

T. K o h o n e n , Self-Organizing Maps, S p r i n g r - V e r l a g , Ber l in , H e i d e l b e r g ,

N e w York, 1995, X V I + 3 6 2 p p .

The book Self-Organizing Maps by Teuvo Kohonen describes some recent results on (artificial and biological) neural networks. It updates the previous monograph "Self-Organization and Associative Memory", written by the same author and published in 1984. Since this year reascarch on SOM (Self-Organizing Map), a self-organizing neural network algorith, has widely increased and the present book is also an account of all the new results of the last ten years. However, it contains also new unpublished material mainly related to Adapt ive- Subspace SOM.

The book is diveded into ten chapters. Chapter 2 affords the problem of the neural modeling, discussing items ranging from the complexi ty of the nervous system and the relation between biological and artificial neural nets to the central topic of learning. Chapters 3 to 5 describe the SOM algorithm and its variants as well as its physiological interpretation. Chapter 6 describes the Learning Vector Quantization Algorithm while Chapters 7 and 7 deal, respectively, with Applicat ions and the Hardware for SOM. Chapter 9 overviews in 22 analytic pages the SOM literature.

The book is written in a clear and didactic style so that, in principle, it could be used by a novel reader without any tutor. The first preliminary chapter contains an extensive mathematical introduction which makes the book selfcontained and the final chapter i0 is a glossary of "neural" terms of 29 pages containing 555 items. Also the references are very complete and cover 67 pages. The book will be useful to any reader interested in the topics dealt with in it, both to the theoretically oriented people and to those more interested in applications and can also be used as a textbook integrating neural-network University courses.

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