Cortronic neural networks with distributed processing

A cortronic neural network defines connections between neurons in a number of regions using target lists, which identify the output connections of each neuron and the connection strength. Neurons are preferably sparsely interconnected between regions. Training of connection weights employs a three stage process, which involves computation of the contribution to the input intensity of each neuron by every currently active neuron, a competition process that determines the next set of active neurons based on their current input intensity, and a weight adjustment process that updates and normalizes the connection weights based on which neurons won the competition process, and their connectivity with other winning neurons.