neural network

American  

[noor-uhl net-wurk, nyoor-uhl] / ˈnʊr əl ˈnɛtˌwɜrk, ˈnjʊr əl /

noun

1. any group of neurons that conduct impulses in a coordinated manner, as the assemblages of brain cells that record a visual stimulus.

2. Also called neural net. Computers. a hardware or software system in which weighted connections between data nodes are refined to produce increasingly accurate results in information processing, as in pattern recognition or problem solving, with the goal of algorithmic computing that requires minimal human intervention.

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neural network British  

noun

1. an interconnected system of neurons, as in the brain or other parts of the nervous system

2. Also called: neural net. an analogous network of electronic components, esp one in a computer designed to mimic the operation of the human brain

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Etymology

Origin of neural network

First recorded in 1985–90

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

neural network

A major turning point for Hugging Face came in 2018, when Google released a new version of its transformer, the neural network technology at the heart of modern generative AI models.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026

"We specifically wanted to incorporate a neural network model into this study to evaluate how accurate the descriptors were at capturing key structural information, in a way that is like human cognition."

From Science Daily ● Jul. 8, 2026

“Remember, when you’re building a neural network, every GPU needs to have a path to every other GPU in the cluster,” Weeks says.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

Because of this similarity, the pretrained neural network initially had difficulty telling the two effects apart.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 11, 2026

Until the middle of the nineteenth century that thinking symbolized the prevailing scientific thought about the human neural network.

From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel