Abstract: Methods and compositions are disclosed that are useful for the inhibition of glial cell proliferation by means of binding inhibiting agents to neural cell adhesion (N-CAM) molecules present on the cell surface. Such inhibiting agents can be peptides derived from the homophilic binding region of N-CAM, monoclonal antibodies, polyclonal antibodies, Fab' fragments, and the like. Exemplary N-CAM homophilic peptides are 7 to 90 amino acid residues having a positively charged amino acid residue separated from a negatively charged amino acid residue by five intervening amino acid residues.

Abstract: An apparatus capable of sensing the presence of objects in its environment, categorizing these objects without a prior description of the categories to be expected, and controlling robotic effector mechanisms to respond differentially to such objects according to their categories. Such responses include sorting objects, rejecting objects of certain types, and detecting novel or deviant objects. The invention includes a device called a "classification n-tuple" (of which a "classification couple" is a special case) capable of combining signals from two or more sensory modalities to arrive at the classification of the object.The invention operates by simulating certain features of animal nervous system, including neurons with responses determined at each moment of time by inputs received along synaptic connections from sensory means or form other neurons. In this invention, neurons are arranged in "groups", which permits them to act cooperatively while still retaining characteristic individual responses.