ABSTRACT
From the biological vantage, there are a variety of neuronal modifications and, in an independent and parallel way, there are a variety of ways to relate such modifications to the behavior of neuronal networks and of entire organisms. Several years ago, we (Levy & Desmond, 1985b) presented a view of synaptic modification, built around associative synaptic modification, which tried to communicate with both experimental biologists and network theoreticians. As with many of the chapters in the present volume, we were greatly struck by the fact that such associative modification was relevant to both pattern recognition problems (see also Levy, 1982; Levy & Steward, 1979) and to the developmental process of synaptic competition.
