autoassociative memory

Autoassociative memory, also known as auto-association memory or an autoassociation network, is any type of memory is able to retrieve a piece of data from only a tiny sample of itself. They are very effective in de-noising or removing interference from the input and can be used to determine whether the given input is “known” or “unknown”.

In reference to computer memory, the idea of associative memory is also referred to as Content-addressable memory (CAM).

The net is said to recognize a “known” vector if the net produces a pattern of activation on the output units which is same as one of the vectors stored in it.