The two volume set LNCS 5263/5264 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Neural Networks, ISNN 2008, held in Beijing, China in September 2008. The 192 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 522 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on computational neuroscience; cognitive science; mathematical modeling of neural systems; stability and nonlinear analysis; feedforward and fuzzy neural networks; probabilistic methods; supervised learning; unsupervised learning; support vector machine and kernel methods; hybrid optimisation algorithms; machine learning and data mining; intelligent control and robotics; pattern recognition; audio image processinc and computer vision; fault diagnosis; applications and implementations; applications of neural networks in electronic engineering; cellular neural networks and advanced control with neural networks; nature inspired methods of high-dimensional discrete data analysis; pattern recognition and information processing using neural networks.