A neural network model which combines unsupervised and supervised learning

A neural network that combines unsupervised and supervised learning for pattern recognition is proposed. The network is a hierarchical self-organization map, which is trained by unsupervised learning at first. When the network fails to recognize similar patterns, supervised learning is applied to teach the network to give different scaling factors for different features so as to discriminate similar patterns. Simulation results show that the model obtains good generalization capability as well as sharp discrimination between similar patterns