Artificial neural network (ANN) training is one of the major challenges in using a prediction model based on ANN. Gradient based algorithms are the most frequent training algorithms with several drawbacks. The aim of this paper is to present a method for training ANN. The ability of metaheuristics and greedy gradient based algorithms are combined to obtain a hybrid improved opposition based particle swarm optimization and a back propagation algorithm with the momentum term. Opposition based learning and random perturbation help population diversification during the iteration. Use of time-varying parameter improves the search ability of standard PSO, and constriction factor guarantees particles convergence. Since several contingent local minima conditions may happen in the weight space, a new cross validation method is proposed to prevent overfitting. Effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method are compared with several other famous ANN training algorithms on the various benchmark problems.
