Neural networks counting chimes.

It is shown that the ideas that led to neural networks capable of recalling associatively and asynchronously temporal sequences of patterns can be extended to produce a neural network that automatically counts the cardinal number in a sequence of identical external stimuli. The network is explicitly constructed, analyzed, and simulated. Such a network may account for the cognitive effect of the automatic counting of chimes to tell the hour. A more general implication is that different electrophysiological responses to identical stimuli, at certain stages of cortical processing, do not necessarily imply synaptic modification, a la Hebb. Such differences may arise from the fact that consecutive identical inputs find the network in different stages of an active temporal sequence of cognitive states. These types of networks are then situated within a program for the study of cognition, which assigns the detection of meaning as the primary role of attractor neural networks rather than computation, in contrast to the parallel distributed processing attitude to the connectionist project. This interpretation is free of homunculus, as well as from the criticism raised against the cognitive model of symbol manipulation. Computation is then identified as the syntax of temporal sequences of quasi-attractors.