Novelty detection is the mechanism by which an intelligent organism is able to identify an incoming sensory pattern as being hitherto unknown. If the pattern is sufficiently salient or associated with a high positive or strong negative

utility As a topic of economics, utility is used to model worth or value. Its usage has evolved significantly over time. The term was introduced initially as a measure of pleasure or happiness as part of the theory of utilitarianism by moral philosoph ...

, it will be given computational resources for effective future processing. The principle is long known in

neurophysiology Neurophysiology is a branch of physiology and neuroscience that studies nervous system function rather than nervous system architecture. This area aids in the diagnosis and monitoring of neurological diseases. Historically, it has been dominated b ...

, with roots in the

orienting response The orienting response (OR), also called ''orienting reflex'', is an organism's immediate response to a change in its environment, when that change is not sudden enough to elicit the startle reflex. The phenomenon was first described by Russian ph ...

research by E. N. SokolovSokolov, E. N., (1960). Neuronal models and the orienting reflex, In ''The Central Nervous System and Behavior'', Mary A.B. Brazier, ed. NY: JosiahMacy, Jr. Foundation, pp. 187–276 in the 1950s. The reverse phenomenon is

habituation Habituation is a form of non-associative learning in which an innate (non-reinforced) response to a stimulus decreases after repeated or prolonged presentations of that stimulus. Responses that habituate include those that involve the intact org ...

, i.e., the phenomenon that known patterns yield a less marked response. Early neural modeling attempts were by Yehuda Salu.Salu, Y. (1988)
Models of neural novelty detectors, with similarities to cerebral cortex
BioSystems, 21, pp. 99-113, Elsevier. An increasing body of knowledge has been collected concerning the corresponding mechanisms in the brain. In technology, the principle became important for radar detection methods during the Cold War, where unusual aircraft-reflection patterns could indicate an attack by a new type of aircraft. Today, the phenomenon plays an important role in

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

and data science, where the corresponding methods are known as anomaly detection or outlier detection. An extensive methodological overview is given by Markou and Singh.Markou, M. & Singh, S. (2003). ''Novelty detection: a review — Part 2: neural network based approaches'', Signal Processing, Volume 83, Issue 12, pp. 2499-2521, ISSN 0165-1684
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References

{{Reflist, 30em Neurophysiology Experimental psychology Machine learning Data mining Statistical outliers

See also

References