This special issue is devoted to one of the important topics of current intelligent information systems-their ability to adapt to the environment they operate in, as adaptation is one of the most important features of intelligence. Several milestones in the literature on adaptive systems mark the development in this area. The Hebbian learning rule,1) self-organizing maps,2,3) and adaptive resonance theory4) have influenced the research in this area a great deal. Some current development suggests methods for building adaptive neurofuzzy systems,5) and adaptive self-organizing systems based on principles from biological brains.6) The papers in this issue are organized as follows: The first two papers present material on organization and adaptation in the human brain. The third paper, by Kasabov, presents a novel approach to building open structured adaptive systems for on-line adaptation called evolving connectionist systems. The fourth paper by Kawahara and Saito suggests a method for building virtually connected adaptive cell structures. Papers 5 and 6 discuss the use of genetic algorithms and evolutionary computation for optimizing and adapting the structure of an intelligent system. The last two papers suggest methods for adaptive learning of a sequence of data in a feed-forward neural network that has a fixed structure. References: 1) D.O. Hebb, "The Organization of Behavior," Jwiley, New York, (1949). 2) T. Kohonen, "Self-organisation and associative memory," Springer-Verlag, Berlin, (1988). 3) T. Kohonen, "Self-Organizing Maps, second edition," Springer Verlag, (1997). 4) G. Carpenter and S. Grossberg, "Pattern recognition by self-organizing neural networks," The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, (1991). 5) N. Kasabov, "Foundations of Neural Networks, Fuzzy Systems and Knowledge Engineering," The MIT Press, CA, MA, (1996). 6) S. Amari and N. Kasabov "Brain-like Computing and Intelligent Information Systems," Springer Verlag, Singapore, (1997).
Self-Organization and Adaptation in Intelligent Systems
