Contrastive Consolidation of Top-Down Modulations Achieves Sparsely Supervised Continual Learning

arXiv — cs.LGWednesday, November 5, 2025 at 5:00:00 AM

Contrastive Consolidation of Top-Down Modulations Achieves Sparsely Supervised Continual Learning

A novel method termed task-modulated contrastive learning (TMCL) has been proposed to improve continual learning in machine learning systems by drawing inspiration from biological brain processes. TMCL is designed to learn effectively from both unlabeled and sparsely labeled data, reflecting how biological brains acquire knowledge. This approach aims to address the prevalent challenge of catastrophic forgetting, where models lose previously acquired knowledge when learning new tasks. By incorporating top-down modulations in a contrastive learning framework, TMCL seeks to maintain robust performance across multiple tasks over time. The method's design supports the prevention of catastrophic forgetting while enhancing the system's ability to consolidate knowledge continuously. Overall, TMCL represents a promising advancement in sparsely supervised continual learning by aligning machine learning strategies with biological learning mechanisms.

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