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The process of training an artificial neural network involves iteratively adapting its parameters so as to minimize the error of the network's prediction, when confronted with a learning task. This iterative change can be naturally…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-10 Kaloyan Danovski , Miguel C. Soriano , Lucas Lacasa

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) suffers from plasticity loss severely due to the nature of non-stationarity, which impairs the ability to adapt to new data and learn continually. Unfortunately, our understanding of how plasticity loss…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Zihao Wu , Hongyao Tang , Yi Ma , Jiashun Liu , Yan Zheng , Jianye Hao

Deep continual learning requires models to adapt to new tasks without retraining from scratch. However, neural networks can lose their ability to adapt to new tasks after training on previous ones, a phenomenon known as loss of plasticity.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Jiuqi Wang , Jayanth Srinivasa , Claire Chen , Shuze Daniel Liu , Ali Payani , Shangtong Zhang

Our understanding of learning dynamics of deep neural networks (DNNs) remains incomplete. Recent research has begun to uncover the mathematical principles underlying these networks, including the phenomenon of "Neural Collapse", where…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-13 Bradley T. Baker , Barak A. Pearlmutter , Robyn Miller , Vince D. Calhoun , Sergey M. Plis

In this paper, we study the dynamics of gradient descent in learning neural networks for classification problems. Unlike in existing works, we consider the linearly non-separable case where the training data of different classes lie in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-11 Ziang Long , Penghang Yin , Jack Xin

Existing analyses of neural network training often operate under the unrealistic assumption of an extremely small learning rate. This lies in stark contrast to practical wisdom and empirical studies, such as the work of J. Cohen et al.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-20 Kwangjun Ahn , Sébastien Bubeck , Sinho Chewi , Yin Tat Lee , Felipe Suarez , Yi Zhang

Despite the striking successes of deep neural networks trained with gradient-based optimization, these methods differ fundamentally from their biological counterparts. This gap raises key questions about how nature achieves robust,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-15 Mattia Scardecchia

We study the relative power of learning with gradient descent on differentiable models, such as neural networks, versus using the corresponding tangent kernels. We show that under certain conditions, gradient descent achieves small error…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-02 Eran Malach , Pritish Kamath , Emmanuel Abbe , Nathan Srebro

Motivated by the flexibility of biological neural networks whose connectivity structure changes significantly during their lifetime, we introduce the Unstructured Recursive Network (URN) and demonstrate that it can exhibit similar…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-27 Siavash Golkar

Natural gradient descent has a remarkable property that in the small learning rate limit, it displays an invariance with respect to network reparameterizations, leading to robust training behavior even for highly covariant network…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-12-11 Christian Goodbrake

Linear networks provide valuable insights into the workings of neural networks in general. This paper identifies conditions under which the gradient flow provably trains a linear network, in spite of the non-strict saddle points present in…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-06-30 Armin Eftekhari

In this paper, we aim at providing an introduction to the gradient descent based optimization algorithms for learning deep neural network models. Deep learning models involving multiple nonlinear projection layers are very challenging to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-03-12 Jiawei Zhang

In gradient descent, changing how we parametrize the model can lead to drastically different optimization trajectories, giving rise to a surprising range of meaningful inductive biases: identifying sparse classifiers or reconstructing…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-11-24 Anna Kerekes , Anna Mészáros , Ferenc Huszár

We introduce a new neural network-based continual learning algorithm, dubbed as Uncertainty-regularized Continual Learning (UCL), which builds on traditional Bayesian online learning framework with variational inference. We focus on two…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-15 Hongjoon Ahn , Sungmin Cha , Donggyu Lee , Taesup Moon

Gradient dynamics play a central role in determining the stability and generalization of deep neural networks. In this work, we provide an empirical analysis of how variance and standard deviation of gradients evolve during training,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-09 Vincent-Daniel Yun

We consider the problem of approximating a function by an element of a nonlinear manifold which admits a differentiable parametrization, typical examples being neural networks with differentiable activation functions or tensor networks.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-20 Anthony Nouy , Agustín Somacal

Neuroscientists have long criticised deep learning algorithms as incompatible with current knowledge of neurobiology. We explore more biologically plausible versions of deep representation learning, focusing here mostly on unsupervised…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-08-10 Yoshua Bengio , Dong-Hyun Lee , Jorg Bornschein , Thomas Mesnard , Zhouhan Lin

In the field of machine learning, comprehending the intricate training dynamics of neural networks poses a significant challenge. This paper explores the training dynamics of neural networks, particularly whether these dynamics can be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-16 Yeachan Park

The impressive lifelong learning in animal brains is primarily enabled by plastic changes in synaptic connectivity. Importantly, these changes are not passive, but are actively controlled by neuromodulation, which is itself under the…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2021-07-06 Thomas Miconi , Aditya Rawal , Jeff Clune , Kenneth O. Stanley

Randomly initialized first-order optimization algorithms are the method of choice for solving many high-dimensional nonconvex problems in machine learning, yet general theoretical guarantees cannot rule out convergence to critical points of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-09-28 Dar Gilboa , Sam Buchanan , John Wright