Maybe it is because of local optimization

Today, I prepared for group meeting and discussed with group members of their research. In the evening, I considered about my research. I think it may be the problem of local optimization.

Summary:

When my model does iterations. It usually stopped after 10 or 20 times after validation checks. I think maybe the performance function mse converges to local optimization so that ANN model iterates so few times.
I searched online and found few ways of improve ANN model by adding functions into it so that we can get global optimization.

But I still found one package called particle swarm optimization toolbox. There are instructions about how to add it into neural network toolbox.
However, the instructions are complicated and there are some problems now to accomplish it. So I have not finished it yet. I will try to figure it out at the weekend.

Next week, I will continue to look for ways to improve ANN model performance.