Elliott 803 used mostly transistors, but it indeed also used magnetic cores for some of its logic gates.

The operating principle was different than that of the parametron, but the end effect was about the same. It used highly non-linear magnetic cores, which could not be switched by one or a few current pulses coming through wires passing through them, but enough pulses would switch the core.

This kind of logic gate, where many inputs are added and the gate switches when their sum exceeds a certain threshold, can be implemented with a wide variety of devices.

The so-called resistor-transistor logic, which was used in some early computers and there were even integrated circuits based on it, works in the same way. When enough of the input resistors are connected to high voltages, the voltage raises enough to switch on the transistor that follows the resistor network.

The logic gates with magnetic cores of Elliott 803 worked in the same way, even if they summed the magnetic fields of currents through wires and the switching threshold was determined by a non-linear magnetic core.

The neurons also use a logic of the same type, i.e. they switch on when enough synapses are excited, even if there are a lot of extra complications, as some synapses are inhibitory and the threshold for switching on is not a constant, but it is variable, depending on the history of the previous excitations.