PURPOSE: To attain high-speed processing by determining a new state of a neural cell on the basis of the state of an input neural cell and a combination coefficient and processing all combination coefficients of specific neural cells selected out of plural neural cells in parallel.

CONSTITUTION: A neural network 10 is provided with a block 11 which performs actual operation, a converting element 12, and a control circuit 13 which supplies a control signal and fixes data. A microprocessor 14 applies data from an optical reader 15 to the control circuit 13. The converting element 12 supplies a new state of each neural cell to the arithmetic block 11 to determine the neural cell state. The new neural cell state is sent to the microprocessor 14 and control circuit 13 and the processing result is displayed on a monitor 18.