Reposted by Jonathan Kadmon
🚨New spotlight paper at Neurips 2025🚨
We show that in sign-diverse networks, inherent non-gradient “curl” terms arise, and can, depending on network architecture, destabilize gradient-descent solutions or paradoxically accelerate learning beyond pure gradient flow.
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www.arxiv.org/abs/2510.02765
arxiv.org
Curl Descent: Non-Gradient Learning Dynamics with Sign-Diverse Plasticity
Gradient-based algorithms are a cornerstone of artificial neural network training, yet it remains unclear whether biological neural networks use similar gradient-based strategies during learning. Expe...
