form of digital computation, since neural spikes may be considered as discrete units or digits, like 0 or 1 - the neuron either fires an action potential or it does not. Accordingly, neural spike trains could be seen as strings of digits. Alternatively, analog computing systems perform manipulations on non-discrete, irreducibly continuous variables, that is, entities that vary continuously as a function of time. These sorts of operations are characterized by systems of differential equations. Neural computation can be studied for example by building models of neural computation. There is a scientific journal dedicated to this subject, Neural Computation. Artificial neural networks (ANN) is a subfield of the research area machine learning. Work on ANNs has been somewhat inspired by knowledge of neural computation. References Neurons Cognitive science Theory of mind Computational neuroscience Artificial intelligence