Abstract: Considering the sensitivity of Kohonen optimal associative memory to inputs with noise,a constrained least squares associative memory （CLSAM） is presented by introducing the constraints to the connection weights of Kohonen associative memory and further optimizing the memory performance of the CLSAM so that the CLSAM has minimum associative error or noise.With the help of the singular value decomposition （SVD） approach and computer simulations,the better performance of the CLSAM is confirmed compared with Kohonen associative model.