Recurrent neural networks, and methods therefor, are provided with diagonal and programming fluctuation to find energy global minima. The method may include storing the matrix of weights in memory cells of a crossbar array of a recursive neural network prior to operation of the recursive neural network; altering the weights according to a probability distribution; setting the weights to non-zero values in at least one of the memory cells in a diagonal of the memory cells in the crossbar array; and operating the recursive neural network.