Introduction. Neural network models of autoassociative, distributed memory
allow storage and retrieval of many items (vectors) where the number of stored
items can exceed the vector dimension (the number of neurons in the network).
This opens the possibility of a sublinear time search (in the number of stored
items) for approximate nearest neighbors among vectors of high dimension. The
purpose of this paper is to review models of autoassociative, distributed
memory that can be naturally implemented by neural networks (mainly with local
learning rules and iterative dynamics based on information locally available to
neurons). Scope. The survey is focused mainly on the networks of Hopfield,
Willshaw and Potts, that have connections between pairs of neurons and operate
on sparse binary vectors. We discuss not only autoassociative memory, but also
the generalization properties of these networks. We also consider neural
networks with higher-order connections and networks with a bipartite graph
structure for non-binary data with linear constraints. Conclusions. In
conclusion we discuss the relations to similarity search, advantages and
drawbacks of these techniques, and topics for further research. An interesting
and still not completely resolved question is whether neural autoassociative
memories can search for approximate nearest neighbors faster than other index
structures for similarity search, in particular for the case of very high
dimensional vectors.Comment: 31 page
