Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology for the stochastically asymptotic synchronization problem for a class of neutral-type chaotic neural networks with both leakage delay and Markovian jumping parameters under impulsive perturbations. Design/methodology/approach The authors perform drive-response concept and time-delay feedback control techniques to investigate a class of neutral-type chaotic neural networks with both leakage delay and Markovian jumping parameters under impulsive perturbations. New sufficient criterion is established without strict conditions imposed on the activation functions. Findings It turns out that the approach results in new sufficient criterion easy to be verified but without the usual assumption of the differentiability and monotonicity of the activation functions. Two examples show the effectiveness of the obtained results. Originality/value The novelty of the proposed approach lies in removing the usual assumption of the differentiability and monotonicity of the activation functions, and the use of the Lyapunov functional method, Jensen integral inequality, a novel Gu’s lemma, reciprocal convex and linear convex combination technique for the stochastically asymptotic synchronization problem for a class of neutral-type chaotic neural networks with both leakage delay and Markovian jumping parameters under impulsive perturbations.