Editorial. Welcome to the Special Issue: The best of the best (D.C. Wunsch II, M. Hasselmo, D. Wang, G.K. Venayagamoorthy). PERCEPTUAL AND MOTOR FUNCTION Adaptive force generation for precision-grip lifting by a spectral timing model of the cerebellum (A. Ulloa, D. Bullock, B.J.Rhodes) Radial basis function neural networks for nonlinear Fisher discrimination and Neyman-Pearson classification (D. Casasent, X.-w.Chen) Intrinsic generalization analysis of low dimensional representations (X. Liu, A.Srivastava) Application of four-layer neural network on information extraction (M. Han, L.Cheng, H.Meng) Subject independent facial expression recognition with robust face detection (M. Matsugu, K.Mori, Y.Mitari,Y.Kaneda) A generalized feedforward neural network architecture for classification and regression (G. Arulampalam, A.Bouzerdoum) COGNITIVE FUNCTION AND COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE Hierarchical cognitive maps (H. Voicu) Modeling goal-directed spatial navigation in the rat based on physiological data from the hippocampal formation (R.A. Koene, A.Gorchetchnikov) An efficient training algorithm for dynamic synapse neural networks using trust region methods (H.H. Namarvar, T.W.Berger) Temporal binding as an inducer for connectionist recruitment learning over delayed lines (C. Gunay, A.S.Maida) Developments in understanding neuronal spike trains and functional specializations in brain regions (R.A. Santiago, J.McNames, K.Burchiel, G.G.Lendaris) Shaping up simple cell's receptive field of animal visual by ICA and it's application in navigation system (L. Zhang, J.Mei) eLoom and Flatland: specification, simulation and visualization engines for the study of arbitrary hierarchical neural architectures (T.P. Caudell, Y.Xiao, M.J.Healy) Associative morphological memories based on variations of the kernel and dual kernel methods (P. Sussner) INFORMATICS Adaptive double self-organizing maps for clustering gene expression (H. Ressom, D.Wang, P.Natarajan) An accelerated procedure fo recursive feature ranking on microarray data (C. Furlanello, M.Serafini, S.Merler, G.Jurman) DYNAMICS Pattern completion through phase coding in population neurodynamics (A. Gutierrez-Galvez) Passive dendritic integration heavily affects spiking dynamics of recurrent networks (G.A. Ascoli) Abductive reasoning with recurrent neural networks (A.M. Abdelbar, E.A.M.Andrews, D.C.Wunsch) Neural networks with chaotic recursive nodes: techniques for the design of associative memories, contrast with Hopfield architectures,and extensions for time-dependent inputs (E. Del Moral Hernandez) Simple and conditioned adaptive behaviorfrom Kalman filter trained recurrent networks (L.A. Feldkamp, D.V.Prokhorov, T.M.Feldkamp) REINFORCEMENT LEARNING AND CONTROL Learning robot actions based on self-organising language memory (S. Wermter, M.Elshaw) Autonomous mental development in high dimensional context and action spaces (A. Joshi, J.Weng) Chaos control and synchronization, with Input saturation, via recurrent neural networks. (E.N. Sanchez, L.J.Ricalde) Proper orthogonal decomposition based optimal neurocontrol synthesis of a chemical reactor process using approximate dynamic programming (R. Padhi, S.N.Balakrishnan) Numerical solution of elliptic partial differential equation using radial basis function neural networks (L. Jianyu, L.Siwei, Qu.Yingjian, H.Yaping) THEORY Statistical efficiency of adaptive algorithms (B. Widrow, M.Kamenetsky) On structure-exploiting trust-region regularized nonlinear least squares algorithms for neural-network learning (E. Mizutani, J.W.Demmel) Stochastic resonance in noisy threshold neurons (B. Kosko, S.Mitaim) Quantum optimization for training support vector machines (D. Anguita, S.Ridella, F.Rivieccio, R.Zunino) On the quality of ART1 text clustering (L. Massey) Extension neural network and its applications (M.H. Wang, C.P.Hung) Fuzzy least squares support vector machines for multiclass problems (D.Tsujinishi, S. Abe) Evolving efficient learning algorithms for binary mappings (J.A. Bullinaria) A network for recursive extraction of canonical coordinates (A. Pezeshki, M.R.Azimi-Sadjadi, L.L.Scharf) Automatic Basis Selection Techniques for RBF Networks (A. Ghodsi, D.Schuurmans) Data smoothing regularization, multi-sets-learning, and problem solving strategies (L. Xu) Million city traveling salesman problem solution by divide and conquer clustering with adaptive resonance neural networks (S.A. Mulder, D.C.Wunsch II) APPLICATIONS A practical sub-space adaptive filter (A. Zaknich) Pharmacodynamic population analysis in chronic renal failure using artificial neural networks - a comparative study (A.E. Gaweda, A.A.Jacobs, M.E.Brier, J.M.Zurada) Electronic nose based tea quality standardization (R. Dutta, K.R.Kashwan, M.Bhuyan, E.L.Hines, J.W.Gardner) A novel neural network-based survival analysis model (A. Eleuteri, R.Tagliaferri, L.Milano, S.De Placido, M. De Laurentiis) Divide-and-conquer approach for brain machine interfaces: nonlinear mixture of competitive linear models (S.-P. Kim, J.C.Sanchez, D.Erdogmus, Y.N.Rao, J.Wessberg, J.C.Principe, M.Nicolelis) Stochastic error whitening algorithm for linear filter estimation with noisy data (Y.N. Rao, D.Erdogmus, G.Y.Rao, J.C.Principe) New internal optimal neurocontrol for a series FACTS device in a power transmission line (J.-W. Park, R.G.Harley, G.K.Venayagamoorthy) Design of an adaptive neural network based power system stabilizer (W. Liu, G.K.Venayagamoorthy, D.C.Wunsch II) On neural network techniques in the secure management of communication systems through improving and quality assessing pseudorandom stream generators (D.A. Karras. V. Zorkadis) Multimedia authenticity protection with ICA watermarking and digital bacteria vaccination (H. Szu, S.Noel, S.-B.Yim, J.Willey, J.Landa) VISUAL CORTEX: HOW ILLUSIONS REPRESENT REALITY Interpolation processes in the visual perception of objects (P.J. Kellman) Laminar cortical dynamics of visual form perception (S. Grossberg) Moving objects appear to slow down at low contrasts (S. Anstis) Neural models of motion integration and segmentation (E. Mingolla)