# BLEND: Behavior-guided Neural Population Dynamics Modeling via Privileged Knowledge Distillation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.13872 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13872/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Distillation for spiking neural networks, one of 12 directions in Knowledge distillation.
- Builds on 15 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Oct 2024.

## Placed in

- Knowledge distillation / [Distillation for spiking neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/distill/distillation-for-spiking-neural-networks/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [UMAP: Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection for Dimension Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03426/) (2018)
- [Learnable latent embeddings for joint behavioral and neural analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00673/) (2022)
- [Neural Latents Benchmark '21: Evaluating latent variable models of neural population activity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.04463/) (2021)
- [Representation learning for neural population activity with Neural Data Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.01210/) (2021)
- [Learning identifiable and interpretable latent models of high-dimensional neural activity using pi-VAE](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.04798/) (2020)
- [Linear dynamical neural population models through nonlinear embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.08454/) (2016)
- [STNDT: Modeling Neural Population Activity with a Spatiotemporal Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.04727/) (2022)
- [Targeted Neural Dynamical Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14853/) (2021)
- [Seeing the forest and the tree: Building representations of both individual and collective dynamics with transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.06131/) (2022)
- [Toward Understanding Privileged Features Distillation in Learning-to-Rank](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.08754/) (2022)
- [Demixed principal component analysis of population activity in higher cortical areas reveals independent representation of task parameters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1410.6031/) (2014)
- [BPKD: Boundary Privileged Knowledge Distillation For Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08075/) (2023)
- [Robust alignment of cross-session recordings of neural population activity by behaviour via unsupervised domain adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06159/) (2022)
- [Learning Time-Invariant Representations for Individual Neurons from Population Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.02258/) (2023)
- [Efficient Time-Series Approximation with Linear Recurrent Neural Networks: Architecture Learning and Predictive Power](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03308/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Cross-Modal Representational Knowledge Distillation for Enhanced Spike-Informed LFP Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12461/) (2025)
- [Neuron Platonic Intrinsic Representation From Dynamics Using Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10425/) (2025)
- [Expert Behavior Prior Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.21302/) (2026)
- [Improving Online Reinforcement Learning via Bidirectional Behavior Prior Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.20268/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Modeling the nonlinear dynamics of neuronal populations represents a key pursuit in computational neuroscience. Recent research has increasingly focused on jointly modeling neural activity and behavior to unravel their interconnections. Despite significant efforts, these approaches often necessitate either intricate model designs or oversimplified assumptions. Given the frequent absence of perfectly paired neural-behavioral datasets in real-world scenarios when deploying these models, a critical yet understudied research question emerges: how to develop a model that performs well using only neural activity as input at inference, while benefiting from the insights gained from behavioral signals during training? To this end, we propose BLEND, the behavior-guided neural population dynamics modeling framework via privileged knowledge distillation. By considering behavior as privileged information, we train a teacher model that takes both behavior observations (privileged features) and neural activities (regular features) as inputs. A student model is then distilled using only neural activity. Unlike existing methods, our framework is model-agnostic and avoids making strong assumptions about the relationship between behavior and neural activity. This allows BLEND to enhance existing neural dynamics modeling architectures without developing specialized models from scratch. Extensive experiments across neural population activity modeling and transcriptomic neuron identity prediction tasks demonstrate strong capabilities of BLEND, reporting over 50% improvement in behavioral decoding and over 15% improvement in transcriptomic neuron identity prediction after behavior-guided distillation. Furthermore, we empirically explore various behavior-guided distillation strategies within the BLEND framework and present a comprehensive analysis of effectiveness and implications for model performance.