A neural network without an activation function is equivalent to a form of a linear regression. A neural network is a computational model that consists of layers of interconnected nodes (neurons) that process inputs and produce outputs. An activation function is a function that determines the output of a neuron based on its input. An activation function can introduce non-linearity into a neural network, which allows it to model complex and non-linear relationships between inputs and outputs. Without an activation function, a neural network becomes a linear combination of inputs and weights, which is essentially a linear regression model.