Neural Encoding

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Overview

Neural encoding asks how sensory input, language, actions, and memories are reflected in patterns of neural activity, including which neurons respond and how timing and population structure carry information. Researchers build encoding models from vision, language, and audio representations, using methods such as regression, attention, latent-variable models, and cross-subject transfer to predict fMRI, EEG, ECoG, and single-neuron responses. A related line studies rate, phase, and spike-timing codes, as well as sparse and event-based encoders for spiking networks and low-power hardware. A central challenge is that accurate prediction or representational alignment does not establish a shared brain–model mechanism, while generalization, interpretability, and task-specific coding often remain in tension.

Latest papers

CardsList

92 papers17 papers in the last four weeks, up 113% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Intrinsic Goals for Autonomous Agents: Hierarchical Exploration Captures Future Volitional Action in Drosophila

    Oct 25, 2026Declan Kutscher, Reece Keller, Alyn Kirsch +2Intrinsic MotivationIntrinsic Reward Methods

    Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park · Machine Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University · Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University +1

  2. Neural-DISCO: Source-Conditioned Counterfactual Editing of Neural Population Activity

    Oct 23, 2026Nico Policzer, James Ho, Joseph Soo +1Neural EncodingCounterfactual Learning

    Michael Smith Laboratories and Department of Computer Science University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada

  3. Scaling Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Brain Encoding

    Oct 19, 2026Zhuofan Josh Ying, Guanglong Sun, Nolan Ho +6Neural EncodingParameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning

    Columbia University · Mind Lab · Tsinghua University +1

  4. Alignment of visual brain encoding models with individual perceptual similarity judgments

    Oct 15, 2026Daniel Chong, Haomiao Chen, Keith W Jamison +4Neural EncodingVisual Neuroscience

    Cornell University · Cornell Tech · Weill Cornell Medicine +2

  5. Beyond the Hamming Cliff: Compact Spatial Encodings Preserving Semantic Distance in Spiking Neural Networks

    Oct 15, 2026Sergio Davies, Muhammad Aitsam, Morgan-Tyler Stone +2Spike-Based Signal EncodingNeural Encoding

    Department of Computing and Mathematics, Manchester Metropolitan University, John Dalton Building, Oxford Road, Manchester, M15 6BH, United Kingdom · Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Sheffield Hallam University, Howard Street, Sheffield, S1 1WB, United Kingdom · Università degli Studi di Catania, Viale Andrea Doria 6, Catania, 95100, Italy

  6. SCRIBE: Scalable Contextual Representations of Interpretable Brain-Grounded Semantics

    Oct 15, 2026Camila Kolling, Omer Moussa, Emin Çelik +1Distributional SemanticsComputational Psycholinguistics

    Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS)

  7. Decomposing Brain-LLM Alignment with Interpretable Semantic Representations

    Oct 15, 2026Camila Kolling, Mariya TonevaNeural EncodingLLM Interpretability

    Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS)

  8. Design and Analysis of Temporal Representations in Neural Networks

    Oct 14, 2026Alban Colas-Gattepaille, Alexandre MuzyNeural EncodingSpiking Neural Networks

    I3S · ILLS

  9. How Long Is the Coast of a Neuron? Resolution-Dependent Interaction Order and Computational Capacity

    Oct 14, 2026Nima DehghaniNeural EncodingNeural Network Approximation Theory

    McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA · The NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI), Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

  10. Binding Phoneme Identity to Position in Neural Models and the Human Brain

    Oct 11, 2026Nafiseh Momeni, Malo Renaudin, Itzhak Fried +1Neural EncodingNeural Representation Geometry

    Université Paris Cité · École Normale Supérieure – PSL · University of California, Los Angeles

  11. Rethinking the Tradeoff Between Temporal Encoding and Nonlinear Computation in Spiking Language Models

    Oct 7, 2026Hanfei Liu, Shuchang Feng, Yanxia Chen +2Spiking Language ModelsLanguage Modeling

    Northeastern University, 110819, Shenyang, China · Hebei Key Laboratory of Marine Perception Network and Data Processing, 066004, Qinhuangdao, China

  12. NeuroLens: Learning Latent Embeddings of Neural Semantics from Chronic Recordings

    Oct 2, 2026Hanrui Lyu, Baiyuan Chen, Tianshu Tan +8Self-Supervised Time Series Representation LearningNeural Encoding

    Northwestern University · University of Cambridge · Johns Hopkins University +3

  13. Controllable Stochastic Quantization Encoding for Adversarially Robust Spiking Neural Networks

    Oct 1, 2026Yujia Liu, Peiyu Liu, Yajing Zheng +1Adversarial RobustnessSpiking Neural Networks

    NERCVT, School of Computer Science, Peking University, China · State Key Laboratory for Multimedia Information Processing, School of Computer Science, Peking University, China · Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Peking University, China

  14. A neural network that maintains and retrieves memories based on context

    Sep 29, 2026Hayoung Song, JeongJun Park, Qihong Lu +4Episodic MemoryRecurrent Neural Networks

    Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin · Center for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, Washington University in St. Louis · Department of Neuroscience, University of Texas at Austin +6

  15. Receptive-field-constrained stimulus optimization for human early and intermediate visual cortex

    Sep 28, 2026Junru Zhao, Hanfei Guo, Andrew Luo +1Visual NeuroscienceNeural Encoding

    Carnegie Mellon University · University of Hong Kong

  16. Cross-attention encoding models reveal dynamic spatiotemporal routing across human higher visual cortex

    Sep 28, 2026Iishaan Inabathini, Margaret M. HendersonCross-AttentionVisual Neuroscience

    Carnegie Mellon University

  17. Graph neural networks for sampling-invariant embeddings of organized signal sets

    Sep 28, 2026Martin Bauw, Santiago Velasco-Forero, Jesus AnguloGraph Neural NetworksGraph Representation Learning

    CMM · CMA

  18. Do Vision Model See Like the Brain? A Comparison Across EEG Encoding Model

    Sep 22, 2026Shashank Baghel, Kshitij Dwivedi, Dinesh Singh +1Vision TransformerVisual Neuroscience

    Centre for Human-Computer Interaction, Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi, Mandi, 175075, Himachal Pradesh, India · Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany · Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany

  19. BrainWideBench: Benchmarking large-scale pretraining and across-animal transfer in multi-region neural recordings

    Sep 18, 2026Alexandre Andre, Shivashriganesh P. Mahato, Vinam Arora +39Transfer LearningRepresentation Learning

  20. Event-Native Symbolic-Temporal Spike Encoding Framework for Heterogeneous Cyber Streams

    Sep 14, 2026Dalton Diez, Peyton Andras, Max Shroyer +1Network Intrusion DetectionSpike-Based Signal Encoding

    Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA

  21. Can a Neural Encoding Model Replicate an fMRI Visualization Study?

    Sep 14, 2026Erfan Nasirzadeh Orang, Zack WhileNeuroimagingNeural Encoding

    Department of Computer Science and Information Systems Youngstown State University

  22. Formal Properties of Language as Constraints on Neural Dynamics

    Sep 13, 2026Elliot MurphyNeural EncodingComputational Psycholinguistics

    Vivian L. Smith Department of Neurosurgery, McGovern Medical School, UTHealth, Houston, TX, USA · Texas Institute for Restorative Neurotechnologies, UTHealth, Houston, TX, USA

  23. From anatomy to computation: axonal delay dispersion shifts neurons from event to sequence detection

    Sep 3, 2026Cheng Bi, Jipeng SunNeural ProcessesNeural Encoding

    Independent Researcher · Department of Computer Science, Princeton University

  24. No country for old linguists: LLM-brain alignment underdetermines neural computation

    Sep 2, 2026Elliot MurphyLLM AlignmentNeural Encoding

    Vivian L. Smith Department of Neurosurgery, McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, Houston, Texas, USA

  25. Neural Logic, Invariance, and the Retina---McCulloch and Pitts

    Sep 2, 2026Nima DehghaniInvariant Representation LearningNeural Encoding

    McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA · The NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USAa)

  26. Neural Ideals and Neural Codes: An Algebraic Framework for Neural Network Classification and Feature Interpretation

    Aug 20, 2026Venkata Subbaiah Yerrapati, Rahul Dixit, Ajay Kumar ShuklaNeural Network InterpretabilityNeural Encoding

  27. Decoding Mixture Perception through Computational Modeling of Component Interactions

    Aug 10, 2026Fei Wang, Xiaoya Xie, Junfei Liu +6Neural Encoding

    College of Biomedical Engineering & Instrument Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310012, China · College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China

  28. How the fly holds a single goal: normalization, not selection, in Drosophila FC2

    Jul 21, 2026Gioele Nanni, Christopher LeeNeural Encoding

    Common Origin

  29. Constrained Hebbian Learning Supports Efficient Representational Allocation under Structural Constraints

    Jul 17, 2026Patrick Inoue, Florian Röhrbein, Andreas KnoblauchHebbian LearningNeural Encoding

    KEIM Institute, Albstadt-Sigmaringen University, Germany · Department of Computer Science, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany

  30. STSBench: A Large-Scale Dataset for Modeling Neuronal Activity in the Dorsal Stream of Primate Visual Cortex

    Jul 17, 2026Ethan B. Trepka, Ruobing Xia, Shude Zhu +6Neural DecodingVisual Neuroscience

    Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program, Stanford University, Stanford, CA · Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA · Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA +1