Spreading activation

Spreading activation is a method for searching associative networks, including biological and artificial neural networks and semantic networks. The search begins by labeling a set of source nodes with an initial weight, or activation, which is then propagated outward to other nodes linked to the source nodes, with the weights typically decaying as they spread through the network. When the weights are discrete rather than continuous, this same process is often called marker passing. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/