# Selective Attention-based Modulation for Continual Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.20086 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.20086/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 37 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Mar 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Towards Deep Learning Models Resistant to Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.06083/) (2017)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting in neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00796/) (2016)
- [Learning without Forgetting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09282/) (2016)
- [iCaRL: Incremental Classifier and Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07725/) (2016)
- [Gradient Episodic Memory for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.08840/) (2017)
- [Barlow Twins: Self-Supervised Learning via Redundancy Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03230/) (2021)
- [Continual Lifelong Learning with Neural Networks: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07569/) (2018)
- [Dark Experience for General Continual Learning: a Strong, Simple Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07211/) (2020)
- [PackNet: Adding Multiple Tasks to a Single Network by Iterative Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.05769/) (2017)
- [Large Scale Incremental Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.13260/) (2019)
- [Gradient based sample selection for online continual learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08671/) (2019)
- [Progress & Compress: A scalable framework for continual learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.06370/) (2018)
- [Online Continual Learning in Image Classification: An Empirical Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10423/) (2021)
- [Task-Free Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03596/) (2018)
- [New Insights on Reducing Abrupt Representation Change in Online Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05025/) (2021)
- [What do different evaluation metrics tell us about saliency models?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.03605/) (2016)
- [FearNet: Brain-Inspired Model for Incremental Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10563/) (2017)
- [Using Hindsight to Anchor Past Knowledge in Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08165/) (2020)
- [Anatomy of Catastrophic Forgetting: Hidden Representations and Task Semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.07400/) (2020)
- [Towards Robust Evaluations of Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.09733/) (2018)
- [Continual Prototype Evolution: Learning Online from Non-Stationary Data Streams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.00919/) (2020)
- [Adversarial Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09553/) (2020)
- [Supervised Contrastive Replay: Revisiting the Nearest Class Mean Classifier in Online Class-Incremental Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13885/) (2021)
- [Class-Incremental Continual Learning into the eXtended DER-verse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.00766/) (2022)
- [Unified Image and Video Saliency Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.05477/) (2020)
- [DeepGaze IIE: Calibrated prediction in and out-of-domain for state-of-the-art saliency modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.12441/) (2021)
- [Transfer without Forgetting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00388/) (2022)
- [Remembering for the Right Reasons: Explanations Reduce Catastrophic Forgetting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.01528/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [CLIP with Generative Latent Replay: a Strong Baseline for Incremental Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15793/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present SAM, a biologically-plausible selective attention-driven modulation approach to enhance classification models in a continual learning setting. Inspired by neurophysiological evidence that the primary visual cortex does not contribute to object manifold untangling for categorization and that primordial attention biases are still embedded in the modern brain, we propose to employ auxiliary saliency prediction features as a modulation signal to drive and stabilize the learning of a sequence of non-i.i.d. classification tasks. Experimental results confirm that SAM effectively enhances the performance (in some cases up to about twenty percent points) of state-of-the-art continual learning methods, both in class-incremental and task-incremental settings. Moreover, we show that attention-based modulation successfully encourages the learning of features that are more robust to the presence of spurious features and to adversarial attacks than baseline methods. Code is available at: https://github.com/perceivelab/SAM.