ABSTRACT
Artificial neural network (ANN) has been a hot topic in the field of artificial intelligence since 1980s. It abstracts the neural network of human brain from the angle of information processing and establishes some simple model. It is widely used in computer, physics, economics, medicine and other industries to form different networks according to different connection modes to realize the joint action of advanced machine and associative memory. It adopts parallel and distributed processing method, which has the characteristics of high fault tolerance, intelligence, autonomous learning and so on. It has the unique advantage to deal with complex problems. However, the research contents are complicated and numerous in the field of Chinese materia medica (CMM). The advantages of ANN can deal with these problems well and have good complementarity. Therefore, the application of ANN is becoming more and more extensive in the field of CMM research. This paper attempts to summarize the application of ANN in the field of CMM research in order to provide support and reference for the research of CMM modernization.