Network algorithms and architectures for pattern recognition derived from neural models of the olfactory system are reviewed. These span a range from highly abstract to physiologically detailed, and employ the kind of dynamical complexity observed in olfactory cortex, ranging from oscillation to chaos. A simple architecture and algorithm for analytically guaranteed associative memory storage of analog patterns, continuous sequences, and chaotic attractors in the same network is described. A matrix inversion determines network weights, given prototype patterns to be stored. There are N units of capacity in an N node network with 3N2 weights. It costs one unit per static attractor, two per Fourier component of each sequence, and three to four per chaotic attractor. There are no spurious attractors, and for sequences there is a Liapunov function in a special coordinate system which governs the approach of transient states to stored trajectories. Unsupervised or supervised incremental learning algorithms for pattern classification, such as competitive learning or bootstrap Widrow-Hoff can easily be implemented. The architecture can be ''folded'' into a recurrent network with higher order weights that can be used as a model of cortex that stores oscillatory and chaotic attractors by a Hebb rule. Network performance is demonstrated by application to the problem of real-time handwritten digit recognition. An effective system with on-line learning has been written by Eeckman and Baird for the Macintosh. It utilizes static, oscillatory, and/or chaotic attractors of two kinds--Lorenze attractors, or attractors resulting from chaotically interacting oscillatory modes. The successful application to an industrial pattern recognition problem of a network architecture of considerable physiological and dynamical complexity, developed by Freeman and Yao, is described. The data sets of the problem come in three classes of difficulty, and performance of the biological network is favorably compared with that of several other network and statistical pattern recognition methods.© (1991) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.