1. Introduction to the area of artificial neural networks

Biological neuron and neural networks, transmission of signals in axons and synapses, information processing in neurons, main parts of the brain.
History and fundamental principles of artificial neural networks.
Adaptation and learning, a formal description of patterns.
Selection and ordering of pattern features, selection and ordering of training patterns. Principal Component Analysis.

2. Early models of artificial neural networks

The model of a formal neuron, weights, potential, transfer function.
Main types of artificial neural metworks.
Connectionism, training and recall, supervised learning and self-organization, knowledge extraction, generalization and robustness.
Perceptron and linear separability, separating hyperplane. Perceptron training algorithm and its convergence, the pocket algorithm.

3. Feed-forward neural networks and error back-propagation

The back-propagation training algorithm and the derivation of weight adjustment rules. Training, test and validation sets, various training strategies.
Internal knowledge representation, generalization, over-fitting and over-sizing, Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension.
Kolmogorov´s theorem, function approximation, complexity of the learning problem.
Main areas and principles for applications of feed-forward neural networks.

4. Associative networks

Recurrent neural networks, Hebbian learning, memory capacity, attractors, energy function and convergence to stable states.
Associative memories, bidirectional associative memories (BAM), the Hopfield model, continuous Hopfield model, simulated annealing, the Boltzmann machine.
Hopfield networks in the search for suboptimal solutions of NP-complete problems.

5. Self-organization and hybrid models

Unsupervised reinforcement learning - Oja´s algorithm for PCA.
Kohonen self-organizing feature maps and algorithms for their training, lateral inhibition, topological neighborhood.
Counter-propagation neural networks, RBF-networks, Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART).
Cascade correlation and modular neural networks - mixtures of local experts.

6. Genetic algorithms

Coding of the optimization problem, population of strings, fundamental genetic operators - selection, cross-over, mutation.
Fitness function. Convergence analysis - schemata theorem.
Applications of genetic algorithms in the field of artificial neural networks.