connectionism

Connectionism is an approach in psychology and cognitive science that models human mental processes, like learning and memory, by simulating the computational workings of neural networks. This "bottom-up" method, sometimes called neuronlike computing, imitates the brain's structure, where simple processors (neurons) work in parallel and information is stored in a distributed manner across connections.1234

Early work in the 1940s proposed that neurons are simple digital processors and the brain functions as a computing machine. Connectionist models have been trained to perform tasks like forming past tenses of verbs, demonstrating a capacity for generalization. This contrasts with symbolic AI, which approaches intelligence by processing symbols rather than mimicking neural structures.1543