[2603.03355] Inhibitory Cross-Talk Enables Functional Lateralization in Attention-Coupled Latent Memory

Quantitative Biology > Neurons and Cognition arXiv:2603.03355 (q-bio) [Submitted on 27 Feb 2026] Title:Inhibitory Cross-Talk Enables Functional Lateralization in Attention-Coupled Latent Memory Authors:Hong Jeong View a PDF of the paper titled Inhibitory Cross-Talk Enables Functional Lateralization in Attention-Coupled Latent Memory, by Hong Jeong View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:We present a memory-augmented transformer in which attention serves simultaneously as a retrieval, consolidation, and write-back operator. The core update, $A^\top A V W$, re-grounds retrieved values into persistent memory slots via the Gram matrix $A^\top A$, providing a principled tripartite projection: observation space $\to$ latent memory $\to$ supervised transformation. We partition the memory into lateralized left and right banks coupled through a sign-controlled cross-talk matrix $W_s$, and show that the sign of this coupling is decisive for specialization. Excitatory cross-talk ($s=+1$) causes bank-dominance collapse: one bank monopolises all inputs and $\mathcal{P}_{ct} \to 0.5$, despite lowering task loss. Inhibitory cross-talk ($s=-1$), motivated by the net inhibitory effect of callosal projections in human cortex, actively suppresses contralateral bank activation and achieves saturated specialization ($\mathcal{D}_{sep} = \pm 1.00$, $\mathcal{P}_{ct} \approx 0$). On a controlled symbolic benchmark combining an episodic bijection cipher (requiring associative recall) with a strict ...