Feedforward neural nets are generally great for classification and regression problems. CNNs are great for complex image classification. But activations for feedforward nets and CNNs flow only in one direction, from the input layers to the output layer. Since signals flow in only one direction, feedforward and convolutional nets are not ideal if patterns in data change over time. So we need a different network architecture to work with data impacted by time.
A recurrent neural network (RNN) looks a lot like a feedforward neural network, but it also has connections pointing backward. ...