This volume contains the proceedings of the 12th Italian Workshop on Neural Nets WIRN VIETRI-Ol, jointly organized by the International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies "Eduardo R. Caianiello" (IIASS), the Societa Italiana Reti Neuroniche (SIREN), the IEEE NNC Italian RIG and the Italian SIG of the INNS. Following the tradition of previous years, we invited three foreign scientists to the workshop, Dr. G. Indiveri and Professors A. Roy and R. Sun, who respectively presented the lectures "Computation in Neuromorphic Analog VLSI Systems", "On Connectionism and Rule Extraction", "Beyond Simple Rule Extraction: Acquiring Planning Knowledge from Neural Networks" (the last two papers being part of the special session mentioned below). In addition, a review talk was presented, dealing with a very up-to-date topic: "NeuroJuzzy Approximator based on Mamdani's Model". A large part of the book contains original contributions approved by referees as oral or poster presentations, which have been assembled for reading convenience into three sections: Architectures and Algorithms, Image and Signal Processing, and Applications. The last part of the books contains the papers of the special Session "From Synapses to Rules". Our thanks go to Prof. B. Apolloni, who organized this section. Furthermore, two sections are dedicated to the memory of two great scientists who were friends in life, Professors Mark Aizerman and Eduardo R. Caianiello. The editors would like to thank the invited speakers, the review lecturers and all the contributors whose highly qualified papers helped with the success of the workshop.

Proceedings of the Fifth International School on Neural Networks "E.R. Caianiello" on Visual Attention MechaProceedings of the Fifth International School on Neural Networks "E.R. Caianiello" on Visual Attention Mechanisms, held 23-28 October 2000 in Vietri sul Mare, Italy.nisms, held 23-28 October 2000 in Vietri sul Mare, Italy. The book covers a number of broad themes relevant to visual attention, ranging from computer vision to psychology and physiology of vision. The main theme of the book is the attention processes of vision systems and it aims to point out the analogies and the divergences of biological vision with the frameworks introduced by computer scientists in artificial vision.

From its early beginnings in the fifties and sixties, the field of neural networks has been steadily developing to become one of the most interdisciplinary areas of research within computer science. This volume contains a selection of papers from WIRN Vietri-99, the 11th Italian Workshop on Neural Nets. This annual event, sponsored, amongst others, by the IEEE Neural Networks Council and the INNS/SIG Italy, brings together the best of research from all over the world. The papers cover a range of topics within neural networks, including pattern recognition, signal and image processing, mathematical models, neuro-fuzzy models and economics applications.

This volume contains the Proceedings of the 9th Italian Workshop on Neural Nets WIRN VIETRI-97, organised by the International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies ((Eduardo R. Caianiello" (IIASS), the Societa Italiana Reti Neuroniche (SIREN) and the IEEE NNC Italian RIG. As in the previous editions some invited and reviewed talks on updated subjects are presented in addition to the original contributions selected by the Refereeing Committee. Also included is Professor C.M. Bishop's Invited paper on: * Latent Variables, Topographic Mappings and Data Visualization; and two review talks that deal with updated topics: * Fuzzy Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition; * A Unifying View of Gradient Calculations and Learning for Locally Recurrent Neural Networks; For publication the original contributions have been assembled into 4 sections: Applications, Architectures and Algorithms, Mathematical Models, Pattern Recognition and Robotics. The Editors thank the invited speaker and all the participants for having contributed to the success of the Workshop by submitting high quality manuscripts, and also express gratitude to the Refereeing Committee for the high quality of the selection process. Maria Marinaro Roberto Tagliaferri VI Organizing -Scientific Committee: B. Apolloni (Univ. Milano), A. Bertoni (Univ. Milano), D.O. Caviglia (Univ. Genova), P. Campadelli (Univ. Milano), A. Colla (ELSAG BAILEY -Genova), M. Frixione (1IASS), C. Furlanello (IRST -Trento), A. Esposito (1IASS), G.M. Guazzo (1IASS), M. Gori (Univ. Firenze), F. Lauria (Univ. Napoli), M. Marinaro (Univ. Salerno - IIASS), F.

This volume contains the Proceedings of the 8th Italian Workshop on Neural Nets WIRN VIETRI-96, organized by the International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies "Eduardo R. Caianiello" and by the Societa Italiana Reti Neuroniche (SIREN). We would like to thank Professor L.B. Almeida who agreed to deliver an invited lecture which is included in these Proceedings. The spectrum of contributors and participants covers the activity of Italian research in the field and of some European groups. The highly qualified and motivated attendance is.proof of the interest with which this annual event has met in the Italian scientific community. Maria Marinaro Roberto Tagliaferri Organizing - Scientific Committee: B. Apolloni (Univ. Milano), A. Bertoni (Univ. Milano), D.o. Caviglia (Univ. Genova), P. Campadelli (Univ. Milano), M. Ceccarelli (CNR NapolD, A. Colla (ELSAG - Genova), M. Frixione (/lASS), C. Furlanello (IRST - Trento), G.M. Guazzo ( lASS), M. Gori (Univ. Firenze), F. Lauria (Univ. Napo/D, M. Marinaro (Univ. Salerno - flASS), F. Masulli (Univ. Genova), P. Morasso (Univ. Genova), G. Orlandi (Univ. Roma), E. Pasero (Politecnico Torino), A. Petrosino (CNR Napoli), M. Protasi (Univ. Roma Ilj, S. Rampone (/lASS), R. Serra (Gruppo Ferruzzi Ravenna), F. Sorbello (Univ. Palermo), R. Stefanel.1i (Politecnico Milano), R. Tagliaferri (Univ. Salerno), R. Vaccaro (CNR Napo/D."

From its early beginnings in the fifties and sixties, the field of neural networks has been steadily developing to become one of the most interdisciplinary areas of research within computer science. This volume contains selected papers from WIRN Vietri-98, the 10th Italian Workshop on Neural Nets, 21-23 May 1998, Vietri sul Mare, Salerno, Italy. This annual event, sponsored amongst others by the IEEE Neural Network Council and the INNS/SIG Italy, brings together the best of research from all over the world. The papers cover a range of key topics within neural networks, including pattern recognition, signal processing, hybrid systems, mathematical models, hardware and software design, and fuzzy techniques. It also includes two review talks on a "Morpho-Functional" " Model to Describe Variability Found at" "Hippocampal" " Synapses" and "Neural Networks and Speech" "Processing." By providing the reader with a comprehensive overview of recent research in this area, the volume makes a valuable contribution to the "Perspectives in Neural" "Computing" Series.

This volume reports the proceedings of the 15th Italian Workshop on Neural Nets WIRN04. The workshop, held in Perugia from September 14th to 17th 2004 has been jointly organized by the International Institute for Advanced Scienti?c Studies "Eduardo R. Caianiello" (IIASS) and the Societ' a Italiana Reti Neuroniche (SIREN). This year the Conference has constituted a joint event of three associations: Associazione Italiana per l'Intelligenza Arti?ciale (AIIA), Gruppo Italiano di Ricercatori in Pattern Recognition (GIRPR), Societ' a Italiana Reti Neuroniche (SIREN) within the conference CISI-04 (Conferenza Italiana sui Sistemi Int- ligenti - 2004) combining the three associations' annual meetings. The aim was to examine Intelligent Systems as a joint topic, pointing out synergies and d- ferences between the various approaches. The volume covers this matter from the Neural Networks and related ?elds perspective. It contains invited review papers and selected original contri- tions presented in either oral or poster sessions by both Italian and foreign - searchers. The contributions have been assembled, for reading convenience, into ?ve sections. The ?rst two collect papers from pre-WIRN workshops focused on Computational Intelligence Methods for Bioinformatics and Biostatistics, and Computational Intelligence on Hardware, respectively. The remaining sections concern Architectures and Algorithms, Models, and Applications. The Editors would like to thank the invited speakers and all the contributors whosehighlyquali?edpapershelpedthesuccessoftheWorkshop.Finally,special thanks go to the referees for their accurate work.

This volume brings together the peer-reviewed contributions of the participants at the COST 2102 and euCognition International Training School on "Multimodal Signals: C- nitive and Algorithmic Issues" held in Vietri sul Mare, Salerno, Italy, April 22 -26, 2008. The school was sponsored by COST (European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research, www.cost.esf.org) in the domain of Information and Communi- tion Technologies (ICT) for disseminating the advances of the research activities developed within Action 2102: "Cross-Modal Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication" (www.cost.esf.org/domains_actions/ict/Actions/Verbal_and_Non- verbal _Communication) and by euCognition: The European Network for Advancement of Artificial Cognitive Systems (www.euCognition.org). COST Action 2102, in its second year of life, brought together about 60 European and 6 overseas scientific laboratories whose aim is to develop interactive dialogue systems and intelligent virtual avatars graphically embodied in a 2D and/or 3D int- active virtual world, able to interact intelligently with the environment, other avatars, and particularly with human users. The main theme of the school was to investigate the mathematical and psycholo- cal tools for modelling human-machine interaction through access to a graded series of tasks for measuring the amount of adjustment (as well as intelligence and achie- ment) needed for introducing new concepts in the information communication te- nology domain in order to develop adaptive, socially enabled and human-centered automatic systems able to serve remote applications in medicine, learning, care, re- bilitation, and for accessibility to work, employment, and information.

This volume contains invited and contributed papers presented at the 12th edition of the International Summer School on Neural Networks "Eduardo R. Caianiello," co-organized by the RIKEN BSI (Japan) and the Department of Physics of the U- versity of Salerno (Italy). The 12th edition of the school was directed by Maria Marinaro (University of Salerno), Silvia Scarpetta (University of Salerno) and Yoko Yamaguchi (RIKEN BSI Japan) and hosted in the Ettore Majoranca Center in Erice in Italy. The contributions collected in this book are aimed at providing primarily high-level tutorial coverage of the fields related to neural dynamics, reporting recent experim- tal and theoretical results investigating the role of collective dynamics in hippocampal and parahippocampal regions and in the mammalian olfactory system. This book is devoted to graduate students and researchers with different scientific background (including physics, mathematics, biology, neuroscience, etc.) who wish to learn about brain science beyond the boundary of their fields. Each lecture aimed to include basic guidance in each field. Topics of lectures include the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex dynamics and mammalian olfactory system dynamics, memory and phase coding, mechanisms for spatial navigation and for episodic memory function, oscillations in neural assemblies, cortical up and down states, and related topics where frontier efforts in recent decades have been successfully linked to a remarkable evolution of the field. April 2008 M. Marinaro S. Scarpetta Y. Yamaguchi

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the COST Action 2102 International Workshop on Verbal and Nonverbal Communication Behaviours held in Vietri sul Mare, Italy, in March 2007.

The 26 revised full papers presented together with 1 introductory paper comprise carefully reviewed and selected participants' contributions and invited lectures given at the workshop. The papers are organized in topical sections on verbal and nonverbal coding schema, emotional expressions, gestural expressions, analysis and algorithms for verbal and nonverbal speech, as well as machine multimodal interaction.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed postproceedings of the 16th Italian Workshop on Neural Nets, WIRN 2005, as well as the satellite International Workshop on Natural and Artificial Immune Systems, NAIS 2005, held in Vietri sul Mare, Italy in June 2005. The 41 revised papers presented together with a lecture by the winner of the Premio Caianiello award were carefully reviewed and improved during two rounds of selection and refereeing.

This volume reports the proceedings of the 15th Italian Workshop on Neural Nets WIRN04. The workshop, held in Perugia from September 14th to 17th 2004 has been jointly organized by the International Institute for Advanced Scienti?c Studies "Eduardo R. Caianiello" (IIASS) and the Societ' a Italiana Reti Neuroniche (SIREN). This year the Conference has constituted a joint event of three associations: Associazione Italiana per l'Intelligenza Arti?ciale (AIIA), Gruppo Italiano di Ricercatori in Pattern Recognition (GIRPR), Societ' a Italiana Reti Neuroniche (SIREN) within the conference CISI-04 (Conferenza Italiana sui Sistemi Int- ligenti - 2004) combining the three associations' annual meetings. The aim was to examine Intelligent Systems as a joint topic, pointing out synergies and d- ferences between the various approaches. The volume covers this matter from the Neural Networks and related ?elds perspective. It contains invited review papers and selected original contri- tions presented in either oral or poster sessions by both Italian and foreign - searchers. The contributions have been assembled, for reading convenience, into ?ve sections. The ?rst two collect papers from pre-WIRN workshops focused on Computational Intelligence Methods for Bioinformatics and Biostatistics, and Computational Intelligence on Hardware, respectively. The remaining sections concern Architectures and Algorithms, Models, and Applications. The Editors would like to thank the invited speakers and all the contributors whosehighlyquali?edpapershelpedthesuccessoftheWorkshop.Finally,special thanks go to the referees for their accurate work.

This volume contains invited and contributed papers presented at the 9th International Summer School "Neural Nets E.R. Caianiello" on Nonlinear Speech Processing: Al- rithms and Analysis, held in Vietri sul Mare, Salerno, Italy, during September 13-18, 2004. The aim of this book is to provide primarily high-level tutorial coverage of the ?elds related to nonlinear methods for speech processing and analysis, including new approaches aimed at improving speech applications. Fourteen surveys are offered by specialists in the ?eld. Consequently, the volume may be used as a reference book on nonlinear methods for speech processing and an- ysis. Also included are ?fteen papers that present original contributions in the ?eld and complete the tutorials. The volume is divided into ?ve sections: Dealing with Nonlinearities in Speech S- nal, Acoustic-to-Articulatory Modeling of Speech Phenomena, Data Driven and Speech Processing Algorithms, Algorithms and Models Based on Speech Perception Mec- nisms, and Task-Oriented Speech Applications. Dealing with Nonlinearities in Speech Signals is an introductory section where n- linear aspects of the speech signal are introduced from three different points of view. The section includes three papers. The ?rst paper, authored by Anna Esposito and Maria Marinaro, is an attempt to introduce the concept of nonlinearity revising several nonl- ear phenomena observed in the acoustics, the production and the perception of speech. Also discussed is the engineering endeavor to model these phenomena.

This volume contains invited and contributed papers presented at the eighth edition of the International Summer School on Neural Networks, dedicated to Prof.EduardoR.Caianiello.Theschoolwasestablishedin1996byProf.Antonio Zichichi, director of the Ettore Maiorana Centre for Scienti?c Culture in Erice (Sicily), and Prof. Maria Marinaro, director of the International Institute for Advanced Scienti?c Studies in Vietri sul Mare, in Italy. The school is held each year,alternatingbetweenEriceandVietri,proposingsurveysonseveralresearch ?elds related to cybernetics studies and human-machine interaction. The eighth edition of the school was on cortical dynamics and was held in Erice. The contributions collected in this book are aimed at providing primarily high-level tutorial coverage of the ?elds related to cortical dynamics, repo- ing recent experimental and theoretical results investigating the processing, the transmission, and the imprinting of information in the brain, and important functions of the cortical area such as cortical rhythms, cortical neural plasticity, and their structural basis and functional signi?cance. Height surveys, reporting the most recent original results, are o?ered by specialists in the ? eld. Consequently, the volume may be used as a reference book on models of cortical dynamics from neuroscienceand physics. To this aim the volume is divided into two sections: fundamentals of cortical dynamics, and mathematical models of cortical dynamics.

The proceedings of the 14th Italian Workshop on Neural Nets WIRN VIETRI 2003 are collected in this volume. The workshop, held in Vietri sul Mare (SA) June 4-7, 2003 was jointly organized by the International Institute for Advanced Scienti?c Studies "Eduardo R. Caianiello" (IIASS) and the Societ' a Italiana Reti Neuroniche(SIREN). Thevolumecoversup-to-datetopicsonneuralnetsand- lated ?elds. It contains invited review papers and selected original contributions presented in either oral or poster sessions by both Italian and non-Italian - searchers. The contributions have been assembled, for reading convenience, into four sections: Models, Architectures and Algorithms, Image and Signal Proce- ing, and Applications, plus two special sessions. The latter gives a fresh persp- tive in the ?elds of "Bioinformatics and Statistics" and "Formats Knowledge: Words, Images, Narratives", sharing the technical languages of the involved d- ciplines. The editors would like to thank the invited speakers and all the c- tributors whose highly quali?ed papers contributed towards the success of the workshop. Finally, special thanks go to the referees for their accurate work. June 2003 Bruno Apolloni Maria Marinaro Roberto Tagliaferri Organizing Scienti?c Committee B. Apolloni (Univ. Milano), A. Bertoni (Univ. Milano), N. A. Borghese (Univ. Milano),D. D. Caviglia(Univ. Genova),P. Campadelli(Univ. Milano),A. Chella (Univ. Palermo),A. Colla(ELSAGGenova),A. Esposito(I. I. A. S. S. ),F. M. Fr- tale Mascioli (Univ. Roma), C. Furlanello (ITC-IRST Trento), S. Giove (Univ. Venezia), M. Gori (Univ. Siena), M. Marinaro (Univ. Salerno), F. Masulli (Univ. Pisa), C. Morabito (Univ. Reggio Calabria), P. Morasso (Univ. Genova), G.

Proceedings of the Fifth International School on Neural Networks "E.R. Caianiello" on Visual Attention MechaProceedings of the Fifth International School on Neural Networks "E.R. Caianiello" on Visual Attention Mechanisms, held 23-28 October 2000 in Vietri sul Mare, Italy.nisms, held 23-28 October 2000 in Vietri sul Mare, Italy.

The book covers a number of broad themes relevant to visual attention, ranging from computer vision to psychology and physiology of vision. The main theme of the book is the attention processes of vision systems and it aims to point out the analogies and the divergences of biological vision with the frameworks introduced by computer scientists in artificial vision.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 13th Italian Workshop on Neural Nets, WIRN VIETRI 2002, held in Vietri sul Mare, Italy in May/June 2002.The 21 revised full papers presented together with three invited papers were carefully reviewed and revised during two rounds of selection and improvement. The papers are organized in topical sections on architectures and algorithms, image and signal processing applications, and learning in neural networks.

Speech Processing, Recognition and Artificial Neural Networks contains papers from leading researchers and selected students, discussing the experiments, theories and perspectives of acoustic phonetics as well as the latest techniques in the field of spe ech science and technology. Topics covered in this book include; Fundamentals of Speech Analysis and Perceptron; Speech Processing; Stochastic Models for Speech; Auditory and Neural Network Models for Speech; Task-Oriented Applications of Automatic Speech Recognition and Synthesis.

From its early beginnings in the fifties and sixties the field of neural networks has been steadily growing. The first wave was driven by a handful of pioneers who first discovered analogies between machines and biological systems in communication, control and computing. Technological constraints held back research considerably, but gradually computers have become less expensive and more accessible and software tools inceasingly more powerful. Mathematical techniques, developed by computer-aware people, have steadily accumulated and the second wave has begun. Researchers from such diverse areas as psychology, mathematics, physics, neuroscience and engineering now work together in the neural networking field.