A new version of my 100-minute interactive neural network lesson is available. The lesson webpages guide university-level students through learning and directed play with a connectionist simulator. The outcome is that students gain a sense of how neuron-like processing units can mediate adaptive behavior and memory.

I’m releasing an interactive tutorial suitable for either individual learning or in the context of a class wherein each student, or pair of students, has a computer. I used it for my third-year psychology university students. Before beginning the 100-minute class, most had little idea how connectionist networks could store memories or compute visually guided action.

Free neural network simulation engines, good for understanding simple cognitive-style networks, abstracting away from the actual reality with all those pesky ion channels and membrane potentials and spikes. Emergent is a workhorse, used by serious neural networks researchers but also useful for learning, in conjunction with an associated neural nets textbook, which is probably good for advanced undergraduates.