Self-Organizing Maps

Also known as SOM, MAP

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Overview

Self-Organizing Maps project high-dimensional examples onto a low-dimensional grid, updating each best-matching unit and its neighbors so nearby inputs tend to remain nearby on the map. Variants include growing and hierarchical maps, SOM-based vector quantization, and optimized or GPU- and distributed implementations for large, sparse, and streaming datasets. They are used for exploratory analysis and as components in tasks such as continual learning, local conformal calibration, and representation learning, with performance assessed through measures such as quantization error and neighborhood preservation as well as task-specific benchmarks. A central tension is scaling and adapting maps without losing useful topology; moreover, preserving structure does not guarantee fair representations, since maps can reveal sensitive attributes absent from training labels.

Latest papers

CardsList

15 papers1 paper in the last four weeks, against 2 the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Modeling bilingual naming performance through laterally-connected SOMs

    Oct 16, 2026Divya Prabhakaran, Uli Grasemann, Erie Shivers +3Lexical RetrievalComputational Cognitive Modeling

    Department of Computer Science, The University of Texas at Austin · Center for Brain Recovery, Boston University

  2. Stable Unsupervised Continual Chunking with Sheaf SyncMap

    Sep 21, 2026Xueyuan Li, Danilo Vasconcellos VargasSheaf Neural NetworksOnline Continual Learning

  3. From 80x to 385x: A Best-Matching-Unit Search at the L2 Roof, Measured Against a Symmetrically Tuned Baseline

    Sep 4, 2026Andrew James AmosGPU Kernel OptimizationSelf-Organizing Maps

    College of Medicine and Dentistry, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia

  4. Unsupervised Continual Learning with Growing Self-Organizing Maps and Synthetic Replay

    Aug 27, 2026Pujan Thapa, Alexander Ororbia, Travis DesellReplay-Based Continual LearningClass-Incremental Learning

    Department of Computer Science Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, NY, USA

  5. A Feature-Major Codebook for Memory-Efficient Sparse-Binary Self-Organizing Maps: Scaling a MEDLINE Atlas to 1.05 Million Neurons on a Single Consumer GPU

    Aug 25, 2026Andrew James AmosSelf-Organizing MapsGPU Acceleration

    College of Medicine and Dentistry, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia

  6. TabSOM: A tabular-to-image encoding method based on self-organizing maps

    Aug 13, 2026David Chushig-Muzo, María Ángeles Rodríguez de Cara, Eva Milara +3Tabular MLSelf-Organizing Maps

    School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, Yachay Tech University, Ecuador

  7. Queryable Self-Organizing Maps: A Database Abstraction for Topology-Driven Data Exploration

    Jul 24, 2026Denis Mayr Lima Martins, Gottfried VossenSelf-Organizing MapsDatabase Systems

    Department of Computing and Mathematics University of Sao Paulo Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil · Department of Information Systems University of Münster Münster, Germany

  8. Motion Primitive Discovery in a Humanoid Robot via Self-Organising Maps for Phase Recognition

    Jul 21, 2026Radovan Gregor, Igor FarkašRoboticsSelf-Organizing Maps

    Department of Applied Informatics Comenius University Bratislava, Slovakia

  9. Self-Organized Conformal Prediction: Reducing Regional Coverage Gaps with Unsupervised Group Discovery

    Jun 28, 2026Louis Berthier, Ahmed Shokry, Maxime Moreaud +2Group-Conditional Conformal PredictionConformal Prediction

    Centre de Mathématiques Appliquées, Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France · Manufacture Française des Pneumatiques Michelin, Clermont-Ferrand, France

  10. TaBIIC2: Interactive Building of Ontological Taxonomies using Weighted Self-Organizing Maps

    May 24, 2026Mathieu d'AquinSelf-Organizing MapsOntology Learning

    MosAIK Team, LORIA,MayCNRS,2026Universit´e de Lorraine

  11. parHSOM: A novel parallel Hierarchical Self-Organizing Map implementation

    May 4, 2026Rebekah Lane, Logan Cummins, Andy Perkins +3Network Intrusion DetectionSelf-Organizing Maps

    Computer Science & Engineering Mississippi State University Starkville, United States · Computer Science University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, United States

  12. FloatSOM: GPU-Accelerated, Distributed, Topology-Flexible Self-Organizing Maps

    Apr 29, 2026Tony Xu, Sarah Klamt, Katherine Turner +3GPU AccelerationHigh-Performance Computing

    John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University · Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, ETH Zürich · Mathematical Data Science Centre, Australian National University +2

  13. Self-Organizing Maps with Optimized Latent Positions

    Apr 15, 2026Seiki Ubukata, Akira Notsu, Katsuhiro HondaSelf-Organizing MapsTopological Mapping

    Graduate School of Informatics, Osaka Metropolitan University, Osaka 599-8531, Japan · Graduate School of Sustainable System Sciences, Osaka Metropolitan University, Osaka 599-8531, Japan

  14. SOM-VQ: Topology-Aware Tokenization for Interactive Generative Models

    Feb 24, 2026Alessandro Londei, Denise Lanzieri, Matteo BenatiVector-Quantized Variational AutoencoderTopological Representation Learning

    Sony Computer Science Laboratories - Rome. Joint Initiative CREF-SONY, Centro Ricerche Enrico Fermi. Via Panisperna 89/A, 00184, Rome, Italy · Department of Computer, Automatic and Management Engineering. Sapienza University, Via Ariosto 25, Rome, Italy

  15. SOMtime the World Ain′'t Fair: Violating Fairness Using Self-Organizing Maps

    Feb 20, 2026Joseph Bingham, Netanel Arussy, Dvir AranUnsupervised LearningAlgorithmic Fairness

    Faculty of Biology, Technion University · Taub Faculty of Computer Science, Technion University