Neural means 'to do with a nerve, or with the nervous system' — the body's web of the brain, the spinal cord, and the thin lines that carry messages to muscles and skin. Scientists say a neural pathway for a route a signal takes, and neural activity for nerves sending those signals. It is a formal lab-and-clinic word, not a street word. You will meet it in medicine, biology, and science class. Though actually, you will also hear it a lot in computer talk, in 'neural network,' because those programs were built to copy, in a loose way, how brains pass signals. That use borrows the body meaning; it does not mean the computer has real nerves. The word itself still starts from nerves.