Finals: Neural Nets in a Nutshell?

I have three finals: one Monday evening and two Wednesday evening. The bad part about having two finals on one evening is that it's two exams for which I have to prepare. The good part is crossover between the two classes: both cover neural networks, although it's definitely on my database exam, my decision support systems class covered it better. Although the Marakas text had problems, including a typo and a cut-off paragraph, it explained neural nets better than the database textbook or the db professor did, and I've gone over his powerpoint several times looking for a good definition. Marakas:

neural networks attempt to mirror the way the human brain works in recognizing patterns by developing mathematical structures with the ability to learn.

One type of human intelligence is the ability to recognize patterns, and then learn to recognize patterns better. Thus, neural networks are one form of artificial intelligence.

If you search the web, though, you'll find as many definitions of neural networks as you do result pages.