# Coupled Mamba: Enhanced Multi-modal Fusion with Coupled State Space Model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.18014 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18014/

## Key facts

- Cited by 31 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Vision Mamba backbones, one of 10 directions in State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba).
- Builds on 40 of its 65 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 May 2024.

## Placed in

- State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba) / [Vision Mamba backbones](https://mlsanity.com/ssm/vision-mamba-backbones/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00752/) (2023)
- [Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14198/) (2022)
- [Efficiently Modeling Long Sequences with Structured State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00396/) (2021)
- [Two-Stream Convolutional Networks for Action Recognition in Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2199/) (2014)
- [Vision Mamba: Efficient Visual Representation Learning with Bidirectional State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09417/) (2024)
- [Simplified State Space Layers for Sequence Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.04933/) (2022)
- [Compressive Transformers for Long-Range Sequence Modelling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05507/) (2019)
- [Multimodal Transformer for Unaligned Multimodal Language Sequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.00295/) (2019)
- [Combining Recurrent, Convolutional, and Continuous-time Models with Linear State-Space Layers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.13985/) (2021)
- [Hungry Hungry Hippos: Towards Language Modeling with State Space Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.14052/) (2022)
- [Tensor Fusion Network for Multimodal Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.07250/) (2017)
- [On the Parameterization and Initialization of Diagonal State Space Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11893/) (2022)
- [Attention Bottlenecks for Multimodal Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00135/) (2021)
- [What Makes Training Multi-Modal Classification Networks Hard?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.12681/) (2019)
- [Deep Multi-modal Object Detection and Semantic Segmentation for Autonomous Driving: Datasets, Methods, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.07830/) (2019)
- [Efficient Low-rank Multimodal Fusion with Modality-Specific Factors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.00064/) (2018)
- [MISA: Modality-Invariant and -Specific Representations for Multimodal Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.03545/) (2020)
- [Long Range Language Modeling via Gated State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.13947/) (2022)
- [Gated Multimodal Units for Information Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.01992/) (2017)
- [X-Linear Attention Networks for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.14080/) (2020)
- [Learning Modality-Specific Representations with Self-Supervised Multi-Task Learning for Multimodal Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04830/) (2021)
- [Learning Factorized Multimodal Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.06176/) (2018)
- [Memory Fusion Network for Multi-view Sequential Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.00927/) (2018)
- [On Deep Multi-View Representation Learning: Objectives and Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.01024/) (2016)
- [Found in Translation: Learning Robust Joint Representations by Cyclic Translations Between Modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07809/) (2018)
- [Deep Multimodal Fusion by Channel Exchanging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.05005/) (2020)
- [AVLnet: Learning Audio-Visual Language Representations from Instructional Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09199/) (2020)
- [Trusted Multi-View Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02051/) (2021)
- [GCNet: Graph Completion Network for Incomplete Multimodal Learning in Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02177/) (2022)
- [CentralNet: a Multilayer Approach for Multimodal Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.07275/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [Multimodal Alignment and Fusion: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17040/) (2024)
- [Semantic-Aware Logical Reasoning via a Semiotic Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24765/) (2025)
- [Logical Phase Transitions: Understanding Collapse in LLM Logical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02902/) (2026)
- [LoRA-Mixer: Coordinate Modular LoRA Experts Through Serial Attention Routing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00029/) (2025)
- [Air-Know: Arbiter-Calibrated Knowledge-Internalizing Robust Network for Composed Image Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19386/) (2026)
- [ConeSep: Cone-based Robust Noise-Unlearning Compositional Network for Composed Image Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.20358/) (2026)
- [MambaVLT: Time-Evolving Multimodal State Space Model for Vision-Language Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15459/) (2024)
- [Advancing Intelligent Sequence Modeling: Evolution, Trade-offs, and Applications of State-Space Architectures from S4 to Mamba](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18970/) (2025)
- [Fusion or Confusion? Multimodal Complexity Is Not All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.22991/) (2025)
- [CM3AE: A Unified RGB Frame and Event-Voxel/-Frame Pre-training Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12576/) (2025)
- [Large Language Model as Token Compressor and Decompressor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.25340/) (2026)
- [GraspMamba: A Mamba-based Language-driven Grasp Detection Framework with Hierarchical Feature Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14403/) (2024)
- [MUG: Pseudo Labeling Augmented Audio-Visual Mamba Network for Audio-Visual Video Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.01384/) (2025)
- [SaFiRe: Saccade-Fixation Reiteration with Mamba for Referring Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10160/) (2025)
- [Cross-modal State Space Modeling for Real-time RGB-thermal Wild Scene Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.17869/) (2025)
- [Mamba-FETrack V2: Revisiting State Space Model for Frame-Event based Visual Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23783/) (2025)
- [UAVD-Mamba: Deformable Token Fusion Vision Mamba for Multimodal UAV Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00849/) (2025)
- [Hypergraph-State Collaborative Reasoning for Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12665/) (2026)
- [Towards Disentangled Preference Optimization Dynamics: Suppress the Loser, Preserve the Winner](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.18239/) (2026)
- [IMAGINE: Adaptive Schema-Imagery Enhanced Composition for Composed Video Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08144/) (2026)
- [DiFA: Inference-Time Forward-Process Alignment for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.17972/) (2026)
- [Semiotic logical hexagon theory for LLM logical reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.21933/) (2026)
- [Multimodal Fusion via Self-Consistent Task-Gradient Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.15475/) (2024)
- [HiddenObject: Modality-Agnostic Fusion for Multimodal Hidden Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.21135/) (2025)
- [AlignMamba-2: Enhancing Multimodal Fusion and Sentiment Analysis with Modality-Aware Mamba](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18462/) (2026)
- [From Topology to Trajectory: LLM-Driven World Models For Supply Chain Resilience](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11041/) (2026)
- [GateMOT: Q-Gated Attention for Dense Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26353/) (2026)
- [PRISM: Synergizing Vision Foundation Models via Self-organized Expert Specialization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.03444/) (2026)
- [RankVR: Low-Rank Structure Perception and Value Recalibration for Robust Composed Image Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.11689/) (2026)
- [CAMOS: Coupled Oscillatory State-Space Model for Multimodal Clinical Time-Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.39484/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The essence of multi-modal fusion lies in exploiting the complementary information inherent in diverse modalities. However, prevalent fusion methods rely on traditional neural architectures and are inadequately equipped to capture the dynamics of interactions across modalities, particularly in presence of complex intra- and inter-modality correlations. Recent advancements in State Space Models (SSMs), notably exemplified by the Mamba model, have emerged as promising contenders. Particularly, its state evolving process implies stronger modality fusion paradigm, making multi-modal fusion on SSMs an appealing direction. However, fusing multiple modalities is challenging for SSMs due to its hardware-aware parallelism designs. To this end, this paper proposes the Coupled SSM model, for coupling state chains of multiple modalities while maintaining independence of intra-modality state processes. Specifically, in our coupled scheme, we devise an inter-modal hidden states transition scheme, in which the current state is dependent on the states of its own chain and that of the neighbouring chains at the previous time-step. To fully comply with the hardware-aware parallelism, we devise an expedite coupled state transition scheme and derive its corresponding global convolution kernel for parallelism. Extensive experiments on CMU-MOSEI, CH-SIMS, CH-SIMSV2 through multi-domain input verify the effectiveness of our model compared to current state-of-the-art methods, improved F1-Score by 0.4%, 0.9%, and 2.3% on the three datasets respectively, 49% faster inference and 83.7% GPU memory save. The results demonstrate that Coupled Mamba model is capable of enhanced multi-modal fusion.