# Learn from Heterophily: Heterophilous Information-enhanced Graph Neural Network

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.17351 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17351/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 26 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Mar 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- [Simplifying Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.07153/) (2019)
- [Simple and Deep Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.02133/) (2020)
- [Geom-GCN: Geometric Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05287/) (2020)
- [Convolutional Networks on Graphs for Learning Molecular Fingerprints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.09292/) (2015)
- [Adaptive Universal Generalized PageRank Graph Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07988/) (2020)
- [MixHop: Higher-Order Graph Convolutional Architectures via Sparsified Neighborhood Mixing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.00067/) (2019)
- [Beyond Low-frequency Information in Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.00797/) (2021)
- [Session-based Recommendation with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00855/) (2018)
- [Large Scale Learning on Non-Homophilous Graphs: New Benchmarks and Strong Simple Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14446/) (2021)
- [Graph Neural Networks with Heterophily](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.13566/) (2020)
- [Two Sides of the Same Coin: Heterophily and Oversmoothing in Graph Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.06462/) (2021)
- [Finding Global Homophily in Graph Neural Networks When Meeting Heterophily](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.07308/) (2022)
- [Graph Neural Networks for Graphs with Heterophily: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.07082/) (2022)
- [Breaking the Limit of Graph Neural Networks by Improving the Assortativity of Graphs with Local Mixing Patterns](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06586/) (2021)
- [Is Heterophily A Real Nightmare For Graph Neural Networks To Do Node Classification?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.05641/) (2021)
- [How does Heterophily Impact the Robustness of Graph Neural Networks? Theoretical Connections and Practical Implications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07767/) (2021)
- [Homophily-oriented Heterogeneous Graph Rewiring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.06299/) (2023)
- [Exploiting Neighbor Effect: Conv-Agnostic GNNs Framework for Graphs with Heterophily](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11200/) (2022)
- [Learning to Represent Programs with Heterogeneous Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04188/) (2020)
- [Powerful Graph Convolutioal Networks with Adaptive Propagation Mechanism for Homophily and Heterophily](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.13562/) (2021)
- [Link Prediction on Heterophilic Graphs via Disentangled Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01820/) (2022)
- [NCGNN: Node-Level Capsule Graph Neural Network for Semisupervised Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03476/) (2020)
- [Self-supervised Learning and Graph Classification under Heterophily](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08469/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [What Is Missing In Homophily? Disentangling Graph Homophily For Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18854/) (2024)
- [OptiMAG: Structure-Semantic Alignment via Unbalanced Optimal Transport](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22856/) (2026)
- [Not Just Oversmoothing: Detecting the Echo Chamber Effect in Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.06521/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Under circumstances of heterophily, where nodes with different labels tend to be connected based on semantic meanings, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) often exhibit suboptimal performance. Current studies on graph heterophily mainly focus on aggregation calibration or neighbor extension and address the heterophily issue by utilizing node features or structural information to improve GNN representations. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate that the valuable semantic information inherent in heterophily can be utilized effectively in graph learning by investigating the distribution of neighbors for each individual node within the graph. The theoretical analysis is carried out to demonstrate the efficacy of the idea in enhancing graph learning. Based on this analysis, we propose HiGNN, an innovative approach that constructs an additional new graph structure, that integrates heterophilous information by leveraging node distribution to enhance connectivity between nodes that share similar semantic characteristics. We conduct empirical assessments on node classification tasks using both homophilous and heterophilous benchmark datasets and compare HiGNN to popular GNN baselines and SoTA methods, confirming the effectiveness in improving graph representations. In addition, by incorporating heterophilous information, we demonstrate a notable enhancement in existing GNN-based approaches, and the homophily degree across real-world datasets, thus affirming the efficacy of our approach.