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Main Authors: Goto, Daiki, Rios, Hector Manuel Lopez, Scholz, Monika, Vaikuntanathan, Suriyanarayanan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.13859
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author Goto, Daiki
Rios, Hector Manuel Lopez
Scholz, Monika
Vaikuntanathan, Suriyanarayanan
author_facet Goto, Daiki
Rios, Hector Manuel Lopez
Scholz, Monika
Vaikuntanathan, Suriyanarayanan
contents Classical autoassociative memory models have been central to understanding emergent computations in recurrent neural circuits across diverse biological contexts. However, they typically neglect neuromodulatory agents that are known to strongly shape memory capacity and stability. Here we introduce a minimal, biophysically motivated associative memory network where neuropeptide-like signals are modeled by a self-adaptive, activity-dependent gating mechanism. Using many-body simulations and dynamical mean-field theory, we show that such gating fundamentally reorganizes the attractor structure: the network bypasses the classical spin-glass transition, maintaining robust, high-overlap retrieval far beyond the standard critical capacity, without shrinking basins of attraction. Mechanistically, the gate stabilizes transient ghost remnants of stored patterns even far above the Hopfield limit, converting them into multistable attractors. These results demonstrate that neuromodulation-like gating alone can dramatically enhance associative memory capacity, eliminate the sharp Hopfield-style catastrophic breakdown, and reshape the memory landscape, providing a simple, general route to richer memory dynamics and computational capabilities in neuromodulated circuits and neuromorphic architectures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_13859
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Neuromodulation-inspired gated associative memory networks:extended memory retrieval and emergent multistability
Goto, Daiki
Rios, Hector Manuel Lopez
Scholz, Monika
Vaikuntanathan, Suriyanarayanan
Neurons and Cognition
Statistical Mechanics
Classical autoassociative memory models have been central to understanding emergent computations in recurrent neural circuits across diverse biological contexts. However, they typically neglect neuromodulatory agents that are known to strongly shape memory capacity and stability. Here we introduce a minimal, biophysically motivated associative memory network where neuropeptide-like signals are modeled by a self-adaptive, activity-dependent gating mechanism. Using many-body simulations and dynamical mean-field theory, we show that such gating fundamentally reorganizes the attractor structure: the network bypasses the classical spin-glass transition, maintaining robust, high-overlap retrieval far beyond the standard critical capacity, without shrinking basins of attraction. Mechanistically, the gate stabilizes transient ghost remnants of stored patterns even far above the Hopfield limit, converting them into multistable attractors. These results demonstrate that neuromodulation-like gating alone can dramatically enhance associative memory capacity, eliminate the sharp Hopfield-style catastrophic breakdown, and reshape the memory landscape, providing a simple, general route to richer memory dynamics and computational capabilities in neuromodulated circuits and neuromorphic architectures.
title Neuromodulation-inspired gated associative memory networks:extended memory retrieval and emergent multistability
topic Neurons and Cognition
Statistical Mechanics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.13859