This paper employs the continuous-time analogue Hopfield neural network to compute the temperature distribution in forward heat conduction problems and solves inverse heat conduction problems by using a back propagation neural (BPN) network to identify the unknown boundary conditions. The weak generalization capacity of BPN networks is improved by employing the Bayesian regularization algorithm. The feasibility of the proposed method is examined in a series of numerical simulations. The results show that the proposed neural network analysis method successfully solves forward heat conduction problems and is capable of predicting the unknown parameters in inverse problems with an acceptable error. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.