This book is the first of a two-volume set that constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, ICANN 2007, held in Porto, Portugal, September 2007. Coverage includes advances in neural network learning methods, advances in neural network architectures, neural dynamics and complex systems, data analysis, evolutionary computing, agents learning, as well as temporal synchronization and nonlinear dynamics in neural networks.

This volume is part of the two-volume proceedings of the 19th International Conf- ence on Artificial Neural Networks (ICANN 2009), which was held in Cyprus during September 14–17, 2009. The ICANN conference is an annual meeting sp- sored by the European Neural Network Society (ENNS), in cooperation with the - ternational Neural Network Society (INNS) and the Japanese Neural Network Society (JNNS). ICANN 2009 was technically sponsored by the IEEE Computational Intel- gence Society. This series of conferences has been held annually since 1991 in various European countries and covers the field of neurocomputing, learning systems and related areas. Artificial neural networks provide an information-processing structure inspired by biological nervous systems. They consist of a large number of highly interconnected processing elements, with the capability of learning by example. The field of artificial neural networks has evolved significantly in the last two decades, with active partici- tion from diverse fields, such as engineering, computer science, mathematics, artificial intelligence, system theory, biology, operations research, and neuroscience. Artificial neural networks have been widely applied for pattern recognition, control, optimization, image processing, classification, signal processing, etc.

This three volume set LNCS 6352, LNCS 6353, and LNCS 6354 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, ICANN 2010, held in Thessaloniki, Greece, in September 2010. The 102 revised full papers, 68 short papers and 29 posters presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 241 submissions. The first volume is divided in topical sections on ANN applications, Bayesian ANN, bio inspired – spiking ANN, biomedical ANN, computational neuroscience, feature selection/parameter identification and dimensionality reduction, filtering, genetic – evolutionary algorithms, and image – video and audio processing.

This two volume set LNCS 5163 and LNCS 5164 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, ICANN 2008, held in Prague Czech Republic, in September 2008. The 200 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from more than 300 submissions. The first volume contains papers on mathematical theory of neurocomputing, learning algorithms, kernel methods, statistical learning and ensemble techniques, support vector machines, reinforcement learning, evolutionary computing, hybrid systems, self-organization, control and robotics, signal and time series processing and image processing.

This two volume set LNCS 5163 and LNCS 5164 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, ICANN 2008, held in Prague Czech Republic, in September 2008. The 200 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from more than 300 submissions. The second volume is devoted to pattern recognition and data analysis, hardware and embedded systems, computational neuroscience, connectionistic cognitive science, neuroinformatics and neural dynamics. it also contains papers from two special sessions coupling, synchronies, and firing patterns: from cognition to disease, and constructive neural networks and two workshops new trends in self-organization and optimization of artificial neural networks, and adaptive mechanisms of the perception-action cycle.

This book is the second of a two-volume set that constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, ICANN 2007. It features contributions related to computational neuroscience, neurocognitive studies, applications in biomedicine and bioinformatics, pattern recognition, self-organization, text mining and internet applications, signal and times series processing, vision and image processing, robotics, control, and more.

ICANN, the International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, is the official conference series of the European Neural Network Society which started in Helsinki in 1991. Since then ICANN has taken place in Brighton, Amsterdam, Sorrento, Paris, Bochum and Lausanne, and has become Europe's major meeting in the field of neural networks. This book contains the proceedings of ICANN 98, held 2-4 September 1998 in Skovde, Sweden. Of 340 submissions to ICANN 98, 180 were accepted for publication and presentation at the conference. In addition, this book contains seven invited papers presented at the conference. A conference of this size is obviously not organized by three individuals alone. We therefore would like to thank the following people and organizations for supporting ICANN 98 in one way or another: • the European Neural Network Society and the Swedish Neural Network Society for their active support in the organization of this conference, • the Programme Committee and all reviewers for the hard and timely work that was required to produce more than 900 reviews during April 1998, • the Steering Committee which met in Skovde in May 1998 for the final selection of papers and the preparation of the conference program, • the other Module Chairs: Bengt Asker (Industry and Research), Harald Brandt (Applications), Anders Lansner (Computational Neuroscience and Brain Theory), Thorsteinn Rognvaldsson (Theory), Noel Sharkey (co chair Autonomous Robotics and Adaptive Behavior), Bertil Svensson (Hardware and Implementations), • the conference secretary, Leila Khammari, and the rest of the