CONNECTIONIST MODELING IN THE NEUROLOGY OF AGING

老年神经系统疾病缺乏可靠的临床标记物 身体和精神状态检查。差动 老年人正常衰老与早期老年期痴呆的诊断 阿尔茨海默型(SDAT)，介于痴呆和假性痴呆之间 SDAT和多发性梗死性痴呆之间的关系是有问题的。 临床标准的发展取决于更好的 对脑功能和脑功能反应的理解 损坏。 高级皮质功能理论，源于对 卒中，取决于功能的局部化，因此不 适用于老年性弥漫性疾病。联结主义是一种 一种使用分布式神经建模的方法 表示和并行处理。这些型号是 生理学方面，他们使用几种类似大脑的技能：学习， 泛化能力、输入歧义消除、检索 按内容而不是按位置存储，优雅地降级。 目标将是使用神经网络模型来引证临床 特定疾病的标志物以及用于预测和检测 潜在的神经递质疗法。这些模型将专注于 临床试验通过将神经递质效应与 临床表现。 提出了一项关于联结主义培训计划的建议 面向衰老临床神经病学的基础研究。 该计划的第一阶段将涉及生物物理学的课程工作， 计算机科学、统计学和数学以及 神经生理学实验室暴露，痴呆症临床工作 和正在进行的连接主义研究的经验 塞诺斯基博士的实验室。在第二阶段，连接主义方法 将用于设计反映特定疾病的系统 衰老。临床和神经生理学数据将用于 约束模型。预计该设计将使用漫反射 具有特定突触连接性的联想连接性 添加了。这些模型将被操纵以模拟特定的 疾病。

The neurological diseases of aging lack reliable clinical markers in the physical and mental status examination. Differential diagnosis between normal aging and early senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT), between dementia and pseudodementia and between SDAT and multi-infarct dementia is problematic. The development of clinical criteria depends on a better understanding of brain function and of functional response to damage. Theories of higher cortical function, derived from studies of stroke, are dependent on localization of function and are thus not applicable to the diffuse diseases of aging. Connectionism is a method of neurologic modeling that uses distributed representations and parallel processing. These models are physiological in that they use several brain-like skills: learning, ability to generalize, disambiguation of inputs, retrieval of memory by content not location, and graceful degradation. The goal will be to use neural network models to adduce clinical markers for specific diseases and for prediction and testing of potential neurotransmitter therapies. These models will focus clinical trials by correlating neurotransmitter effects with clinical findings. A proposal is presented for a training program in connectionism oriented to basic research in the clinical neurology of aging. Phase I of the program will involve course work in biophysics, computer science, statistics and mathematics as well as laboratory exposure in neurophysiology, clinical work in dementia and experience with ongoing connectionist research in Dr. Sejnowski's laboratory. In phase II, connectionist methods will be used to design systems that reflect the specific diseases of aging. Clinical and neurophysiological data will be used to constrain the models. The design is expected to use diffuse associative connectivity with specific synaptic connectivity added. These models will be manipulated to simulate particular diseases.