English

D-MEM: Dopamine-Gated Agentic Memory via Reward Prediction Error Routing

Neurons and Cognition 2026-03-17 v1 Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Autonomous LLM agents require structured long-term memory, yet current "append-and-evolve" systems like A-MEM face O(N^2) write-latency and excessive token costs. We introduce D-MEM (Dopamine-Gated Agentic Memory), a biologically inspired architecture that decouples short-term interaction from cognitive restructuring via a Fast/Slow routing system based on Reward Prediction Error (RPE). A lightweight Critic Router evaluates stimuli for Surprise and Utility. Routine, low-RPE inputs are bypassed or cached in an O(1) fast-access buffer. Conversely, high-RPE inputs, such as factual contradictions or preference shifts, trigger a "dopamine" signal, activating the O(N) memory evolution pipeline to reshape the agent's knowledge graph. To evaluate performance under realistic conditions, we introduce the LoCoMo-Noise benchmark, which injects controlled conversational noise into long-term sessions. Evaluations demonstrate that D-MEM reduces token consumption by over 80%, eliminates O(N^2) bottlenecks, and outperforms baselines in multi-hop reasoning and adversarial resilience. By selectively gating cognitive restructuring, D-MEM provides a scalable, cost-efficient foundation for lifelong agentic memory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.14597,
  title  = {D-MEM: Dopamine-Gated Agentic Memory via Reward Prediction Error Routing},
  author = {Yuru Song and Qi Xin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.14597},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:21:03.401Z