Neural Information Processing: 14th International Confernce, ICONIP 2007, Kitakyushu, Japan, November 13-16, 2007, Revised Selected Papers, Part I

These two-volume books comprise the post-conference proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP 2007) held in Kitakyushu, Japan, during November 13–16, 2007. The Asia Paci?c Neural Network Assembly (APNNA) was founded in 1993. The ?rst ICONIP was held in 1994 in Seoul, Korea, sponsored by APNNA in collaboration with regional organizations. Since then, ICONIP has consistently provided prestigious opp- tunities for presenting and exchanging ideas on neural networks and related ?elds. Research ?elds covered by ICONIP have now expanded to include such ?elds as bioinformatics, brain machine interfaces, robotics, and computational intelligence. We had 288 ordinary paper submissions and 3 special organized session p- posals. Although the quality of submitted papers on the average was excepti- ally high, only 60% of them were accepted after rigorous reviews, each paper being reviewed by three reviewers. Concerning special organized session prop- als, two out of three were accepted. In addition to ordinary submitted papers, we invited 15 special organized sessions organized by leading researchers in emerging ?elds to promote future expansion of neural information processing. ICONIP 2007 was held at the newly established Kitakyushu Science and Research Park in Kitakyushu, Japan. Its theme was “Towards an Integrated Approach to the Brain―Brain-Inspired Engineering and Brain Science,” which emphasizes the need for cross-disciplinary approaches for understanding brain functions and utilizing the knowledge for contributions to the society. It was jointly sponsored by APNNA, Japanese Neural Network Society (JNNS), and the 21st century COE program at Kyushu Institute of Technology.

The two volume set LNCS 4984 and LNCS 4985 constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, ICONIP 2007, held in Kitakyushu, Japan, in November 2007, jointly with BRAINIT 2007, the 4th International Conference on Brain-Inspired Information Technology.

The 228 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous ordinary paper submissions and 15 special organized sessions. The 116 papers of the first volume are organized in topical sections on computational neuroscience, learning and memory, neural network models, supervised/unsupervised/reinforcement learning, statistical learning algorithms, optimization algorithms, novel algorithms, as well as motor control and vision. The second volume contains 112 contributions related to statistical and pattern recognition algorithms, neuromorphic hardware and implementations, robotics, data mining and knowledge discovery, real world applications, cognitive and hybrid intelligent systems, bioinformatics, neuroinformatics, brain-conputer interfaces, and novel approaches.