In machine learning and cognitive science, artificial neural networks (ANNs) is a network inspired by biological neural networks (the central nervous systems of animals, in particular the brain) which are used to estimate or approximate functions that can depend on a large number of inputs that are generally unknown. Artificial neural networks are typically specified using three things:

Architecture specifies what variables are involved in the network and their topological relationships—for example the variables involved in a neural network might be the weights of the connections between the neurons, along with activities of the neurons
Activity Rule Most neural network models have short time-scale dynamics: local rules define how the activities of the neurons change in response to each other. Typically the activity rule depends on the weights (the parameters) in the network.
Learning Rule The learning rule specifies the way in which the neural network's weights change with time. This learning is usually viewed as taking place on a longer time scale than the time scale of the dynamics under the activity rule. Usually the learning rule will depend on the activities of the neurons. It may also depend on the values of the target values supplied by a teacher and on the current value of the weights.
For example, a neural network for handwriting recognition is defined by a set of input neurons which may be activated by the pixels of an input image. After being weighted and transformed by a function (determined by the network's designer), the activations of these neurons are then passed on to other neurons. This process is repeated until finally, the output neuron that determines which character was read is activated.

Like other machine learning methods – systems that learn from data – neural networks have been used to solve a wide variety of tasks, like computer vision and speech recognition, that are hard to solve using ordinary rule-based programming.