# Dual Mamba for Node-Specific Representation Learning: Tackling Over-Smoothing with Selective State Space Modeling

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.06756 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.06756/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Video, motion and generative Mamba models, one of 10 directions in State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba).
- Builds on 17 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Nov 2025.

## Placed in

- State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba) / [Video, motion and generative Mamba models](https://mlsanity.com/ssm/video-motion-and-generative-mamba-models/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Transformers are SSMs: Generalized Models and Efficient Algorithms Through Structured State Space Duality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.21060/) (2024)
- [Predict then Propagate: Graph Neural Networks meet Personalized PageRank](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.05997/) (2018)
- [A Generalization of Transformer Networks to Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09699/) (2020)
- [Adaptive Universal Generalized PageRank Graph Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07988/) (2020)
- [An Empirical Study of Mamba-based Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07887/) (2024)
- [Graph-Mamba: Towards Long-Range Graph Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00789/) (2024)
- [The Hidden Attention of Mamba Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.01590/) (2024)
- [SiMBA: Simplified Mamba-Based Architecture for Vision and Multivariate Time series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15360/) (2024)
- [Understanding the Information Propagation Effects of Communication Topologies in LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23352/) (2025)
- [VCR-Graphormer: A Mini-batch Graph Transformer via Virtual Connections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16030/) (2024)
- [Matten: Video Generation with Mamba-Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.03025/) (2024)
- [Unifying Unsupervised Graph-Level Anomaly Detection and Out-of-Distribution Detection: A Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15523/) (2024)
- [Topology-Informed Graph Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02005/) (2024)
- [Raising the Bar in Graph OOD Generalization: Invariant Learning Beyond Explicit Environment Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10706/) (2025)
- [Mamba-Based Graph Convolutional Networks: Tackling Over-smoothing with Selective State Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15461/) (2025)

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

- [End-to-End Cell Detection via Instance-aware Graph Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.15354/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Over-smoothing remains a fundamental challenge in deep Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), where repeated message passing causes node representations to become indistinguishable. While existing solutions, such as residual connections and skip layers, alleviate this issue to some extent, they fail to explicitly model how node representations evolve in a node-specific and progressive manner across layers. Moreover, these methods do not take global information into account, which is also crucial for mitigating the over-smoothing problem. To address the aforementioned issues, in this work, we propose a Dual Mamba-enhanced Graph Convolutional Network (DMbaGCN), which is a novel framework that integrates Mamba into GNNs to address over-smoothing from both local and global perspectives. DMbaGCN consists of two modules: the Local State-Evolution Mamba (LSEMba) for local neighborhood aggregation and utilizing Mamba's selective state space modeling to capture node-specific representation dynamics across layers, and the Global Context-Aware Mamba (GCAMba) that leverages Mamba's global attention capabilities to incorporate global context for each node. By combining these components, DMbaGCN enhances node discriminability in deep GNNs, thereby mitigating over-smoothing. Extensive experiments on multiple benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our method.