Representation Alignment

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Overview

Representation alignment asks when different models, modalities, or groups of users encode the same useful structure, and whether those representations can support transfer or cooperation. Researchers compare spaces with methods such as CKA, RSA, nearest-neighbor overlap, and Procrustes alignment, or train mappings with contrastive losses, distillation, and lightweight adapters. Applications range from vision-language models and brain-signal decoding to federated learning, diffusion generation, and transferring capabilities between language models. A central open tension is that similar geometry or high alignment scores do not necessarily mean models behave alike: agreement may hold for broad relationships but fail for fine details or useful information transfer.

Latest papers

CardsList

113 papers22 papers in the last four weeks, up 100% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Latent Bridge: From Video Latents to 3D Geometry via Feature Alignment

    Oct 20, 2026Shuai Zhang, Zhanpeng Ouyang, Zhengqing Chen +73D ReconstructionFeed-Forward 3D Reconstruction

    Huazhong University of Science and Technology · Horizon Robotics

  2. Relational Spatial Alignment for Vision-Language-Action Models

    Oct 17, 2026Chaoran Zhu, Hengyi Wang, Chenglin Cui +3Representation Alignment3D Spatial Reasoning

    Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom · University College London, United Kingdom · VGG, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

  3. Native Geometry vs. Linear Recoverability: How Alignment Changes Platonic Scaling

    Oct 15, 2026Angus Hoy, Austin Lutterbach, Jasper Chong +2Neural Representation GeometryLatent Space Geometry

    EleutherAI SOAR · UniverseTBD · University of Queensland +4

  4. Semantic Alignment of EEG and Text: A Contrastive Learning Framework for Decoding Imagined Speech

    Oct 14, 2026Shahryar G. Namdari, Francesco Iacomi, Riccardo Barbieri +1EEG DecodingEEG-to-Text Decoding

    Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, 20133, Italy

  5. From Plato to Aristotle: Toward a General Theory of Representation Hypotheses

    Oct 14, 2026Dai Shi, Andi Han, Xiaoyu Li +2Representation AlignmentPlatonic Representation Hypothesis

    University of Cambridge · University of Sydney · University of New South Wales

  6. Sparse Autoencoders Are a Shared Coordinate System for Symbolic Matching

    Oct 14, 2026Xiaocong Yang, Xuanyu Meng, Yuji Zhang +2Neuro-Symbolic AIRepresentation Alignment

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  7. LoopREG: Representation Supervision Enables Test-Time Recurrent Depth in Diffusion Transformers

    Oct 13, 2026Zipeng Wang, Anping Xiong, Jing Zhang +17Diffusion-Based Image GenerationDiffusion Transformer

    Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications · China United Network Communications Group Co., Ltd. · University of Electronic Science and Technology of China +1

  8. HiPPT: Physiology-Grounded Wearable PPG Representation Learning via Multi-Scope Text Alignment

    Oct 10, 2026Jiaqi Wang, Wei Chen, Xiaoyu Li +7Representation LearningPhotoplethysmography

    Southeast University · OPPO · Shenzhen Technology University +1

  9. Scale, Drivers, and Limits of Representational Alignment Across Large Language Models

    Oct 10, 2026Jialin Wu, Meenakshi KhoslaRepresentation AlignmentRepresentation Geometry in Language Models

  10. RARA: Robust Policy Fine-Tuning through Retrieval-Anchored Representation Alignment for Robotic Manipulation

    Oct 9, 2026Xuhui Kang, Sung-Wook Lee, Yan Zhuang +2Robot Policy AdaptationRobustness of VLA Models

    University of Virginia

  11. A Better Metric Will Not Save You: What You Compare Beats How You Compare It

    Oct 9, 2026Noureddine Khaous, Guillaume WisniewskiRepresentational Similarity AnalysisRepresentation Alignment

    LLF - UMR7110, UPCité

  12. CoVA: Composing VAE Representations for Generative Learning

    Oct 9, 2026Zhaowei Chen, Yikai Ge, Linze Li +2Diffusion-Based Image GenerationDiffusion Transformer

    Jiiov Technology · Nankai University

  13. Learning Kilometer-Scale Weather Prediction with Global-Regional Alignment

    Oct 8, 2026Guowen Li, Yang Liu, Yujie Wang +5Weather ForecastingRepresentation Alignment

    Tsinghua University · The Chinese University of Hong Kong · Sun Yat-Sen University +1

  14. Do Better Visual Representations Always Lead to Better End-to-End Autonomous Driving?

    Oct 7, 2026Zihao Zhang, Haochen Tian, Tianyu Li +5End-to-End Autonomous DrivingRepresentation Alignment

    Southeast University · OpenDriveLab at The University of Hong Kong · Shenzhen Loop Area Institute

  15. A theory of platonic representations in language models

    Oct 5, 2026Darshil Doshi, Wenjie Zhou, Corinna Elena Wegner +3Belief PropagationMultilingual Language Models

    Johns Hopkins Univeristy · Johns Hopkins University & EPFL

  16. Closing the Context Gap: Activation Alignment for Tabular In-Context Learning

    Oct 5, 2026Yoel ZeldesTabular Foundation ModelsTabular ICL

    Independent Researcher

  17. Representation--Behavior Alignment for Explainable Weakly-Supervised Video Anomaly Detection

    Oct 4, 2026Chao Huang, Pengfei Wei, Kaige Li +4Interpretable Anomaly DetectionRepresentation Alignment

    Sun Yat-sen University · University of Macau

  18. On Representational Alignment among Embodied Agents

    Oct 2, 2026Fulvio MastrogiovanniRepresentation AlignmentEmbodied AI

    University of Genoa, Italy

  19. PixelDense: Dense Prediction as Representation Alignment for Pixel Diffusion

    Sep 30, 2026Lehan Yang, Daiqing Qi, Wenhao Zhang +9Diffusion Model AlignmentDiffusion Transformer

    University of Virginia · Michigan State University · Adobe +1

  20. Representation Alignment as a Bottleneck in LLM-Based Retrosynthesis Planning

    Sep 28, 2026Hyunwoo Yoo, Cassie Huang, Haebin Shin +2LLM PlanningSymbolic Planning

    Drexel University · University of Michigan

  21. SignFLIP: A Unified Model for Sign Language Translation and Generation via Stage-wise Alignment at Scale

    Sep 28, 2026Zhaoyi An, Sihan Tan, Youngbae Hwang +2Sign Language TranslationRepresentation Alignment

    Institute of Science Tokyo · Chungbuk National University

  22. What Visual Generators Need from Teachers: Rethinking Representation Alignment

    Sep 28, 2026Yongcong Wang, Hingchin Chen, Mingyu Fan +6Diffusion Model AlignmentDiffusion Transformer

    Central South University · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · Tsinghua University +7

  23. A Light Bilevel Refinement Aligns Self-Supervised Representations for Stronger Task-Specific Learning

    Sep 27, 2026Gustav Wagner Zakarias, Zheng-Hua TanFine-TuningBilevel Optimization

    Aalborg University · Pioneer Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Denmark

  24. Can Circuit Alignment Predict OOD Generalization?

    Sep 25, 2026Ayan Banerjee, Abhra Chaudhuri, Josep Llados +2Distribution Shift RobustnessOOD Generalization

    Computer Vision Center, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona · Fujitsu Research of Europe · Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata +1

  25. The Alignment Illusion in Multimodal Large Language Models

    Sep 24, 2026Hong-Han Wang, Yuntao Wang, Hu DingRepresentational Similarity AnalysisMultimodal Large Language Models

    University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

  26. It's the Geometry, Not the Model: Effective Rank and Subspace Alignment in Functional Connectivity Classification

    Sep 24, 2026Xiao Fan, Jingyuan Li, Yubo Han +6Intrinsic DimensionalityFunctional Connectivity

  27. What Converges in the Platonic Representation Hypothesis? Structure over Geometry

    Sep 23, 2026Junwon You, Mihyun Jang, Sangwoo Mo +1Neural Representation GeometryRepresentation Alignment

    KAIST · POSTECH

  28. Comparing Latent Concept Formation in State Space Models and Transformers via Sparse Autoencoders

    Sep 21, 2026Rithin Nagaraj, Rupa Laalasa Oruganti, Prerna Subhashchandra Kunder +1Transformer InterpretabilityLanguage Modeling

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering PES University Bangalore, India

  29. Displacement Geometry Captures Platonic Shared Reality Across Models and Modalities

    Sep 21, 2026Chenming Shang, Yujin Tang, Jun Jie Ou Yang +3Cross-Modal AlignmentTransfer Learning

    Department of Computer Science, DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

  30. Portable Semantics, Private Dialects: Reuse and Negative Transfer in Latent Communication Between Language-Model Cells

    Sep 10, 2026Narcis MarincatMulti-Agent CommunicationNegative Transfer

    Independent researcher.