Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology

Connectionist models have been developed in diverse areas of psychiatric inquiry. Their span is from low-level biologically inspired models of the effects of synaptic pathology and drug action on mental function to attempts to implement higher levels of description such as psychodynamic psychopathology within a brainlike framework. This article reviews a number of the models relevant to psychiatry and argues that the connectionist approach, particularly because of its ability to model failures in psychological function, offers a powerful new tool in the exploration of the substrate of mental disorder.