The Art of Not Forgetting A Local Learning Architecture for Continual Learning

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2607.26523v1
• Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2026 06:42:23 GMT
• Title: The Art of Not Forgetting A Local Learning Architecture for Continual Learning
• Abstract summary: We introduce CMP, a continual-learning architecture that repre?sents inputs as sparse relational codes.<n>We investigate whether combining sparse representations, local learning, and persistent memory can reduce catastrophic forgetting.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
• Abstract: We introduce CMP (Cognitive Memory Primitive), a continual-learning architecture that repre?sents inputs as sparse relational codes, stores them in a two-tier competitive memory, and learns through local updates without end-to-end backpropagation through its feature-generating system. We investigate whether combining sparse representations, local learning, and persistent memory can reduce catastrophic forgetting relative to conventional backpropagation-based continual?learning approaches. On a controlled domain-incremental byte-level language modeling protocol, CMP demonstrates substantially lower backward transfer than a parameter-matched Trans?former trained with online Elastic Weight Consolidation (EWC). Across a three-seed replicated 15-domain experiment, CMP exhibits stable forgetting behavior, while separate head-to-head comparisons and domain-order analyses show consistently lower forgetting than the evaluated Transformer baseline under the reported experimental settings. We report these findings alongside a substantial single-domain accuracy gap relative to the Transformer, a null result on a vision benchmark, and a documented failure to combine CMP with an independent accuracy-improving mechanism, reflecting our commitment to reporting both positive and negative outcomes. These results suggest that the combination of sparse representations, local learning, and persistent memory is a promising direction for continual learning, while motivating further investigation into the respective roles of learning rules, representations, and architectural design in mitigating catastrophic forgetting.

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