Coupled Neural P Systems

Inspired by Eckhorn's neuron model that emulates a mammal's visual cortex, this paper proposes a new kind of neural-like P system, called a coupled neural P (CNP) system. The CNP system consists of some coupled neurons, each with three components: receptive field, modulation, and output module. CNP systems are a kind of distributed parallel-computing model with a directed graph structure like spiking neural P systems. Moreover, CNP systems have a nonlinear coupled-modulation characteristic and a dynamic threshold mechanism. The computational power of CNP systems is discussed. Specifically, it is proved that CNP systems as number-generating devices are Turing universal. Moreover, we provide a small universal CNP system for function-computing devices.