Multi-Frequency Local Plasticity for Visual Representation Learning

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09734v2
• Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2026 02:00:26 GMT
• Title: Multi-Frequency Local Plasticity for Visual Representation Learning
• Abstract summary: We study how far structured architectural bias can compensate for the absence of end-to-end gradient-based representation learning in visual recognition.<n>We introduce a modular hierarchical framework combining: (i) fixed multi-frequency Gabor decomposition into F=7 parallel streams; (ii) within-stream competitive learning with Hebbian and Oja updates and anti-Hebbian decorrelation; and (iii) an associative memory module inspired by modern Hopfield retrieval.
• Score: 0.40048696135519796
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: We study how far structured architectural bias can compensate for the absence of end-to-end gradient-based representation learning in visual recognition. Building on the VisNet tradition, we introduce a modular hierarchical framework combining: (i) fixed multi-frequency Gabor decomposition into F=7 parallel streams; (ii) within-stream competitive learning with Hebbian and Oja updates and anti-Hebbian decorrelation; (iii) an associative memory module inspired by modern Hopfield retrieval; and (iv) iterative top-down modulation using local prediction and reconstruction signals. Representational layers are trained without end-to-end backpropagation through the full hierarchy; only the final linear readout and top-down projection matrices are optimized by gradient descent. We therefore interpret the model as a hybrid system that is predominantly locally trained but includes a small number of gradient-trained parameters. On CIFAR-10, the full model reaches 80.1% +/- 0.3% top-1 accuracy, linear probe), compared with 71.0% for a Hebbian-only baseline and 83.4% for a gradient-trained model on the same fixed Gabor basis. On CIFAR-100, performance is 54.8%. Factorial analysis indicates that multi-frequency streams, associative memory, and top-down feedback contribute largely additively, with a significant Streams x TopDown interaction (p=0.02). These results suggest that carefully chosen architectural priors can recover a substantial fraction of the performance typically associated with global gradient training, while leaving a measurable residual gap. Experiments are limited to CIFAR-10/100.

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