The present Special Issue "Advances in Neural Networks Research: IJCNN2009" provides a state-of-art overview of the field of neural networks. It includes 39 papers from selected areas of the 2009 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN2009). IJCNN2009 took place on June 14-19, 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and it represents an exemplary collaboration between the International Neural Networks Society and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. Topics in this issue include neuroscience and cognitive science, computational intelligence and machine learning, hybrid techniques, nonlinear dynamics and chaos, various soft computing technologies, intelligent signal processing and pattern recognition, bioinformatics and biomedicine, and engineering applications.