Continual Learning of Multiple Cognitive Functions with Brain-inspired Temporal Development Mechanism

Abstract: Cognitive functions in current artificial intelligence networks are tied to the exponential increase in network scale, whereas the human brain can continuously learn hundreds of cognitive functions with remarkably low energy consumption. This advantage is in part due to the brain cross-regional temporal development mechanisms, where the progressive formation, reorganization, and pruning of connections from basic to advanced regions, facilitate knowledge transfer and prevent network redundancy. Inspired by these, we propose the Continual Learning of Multiple Cognitive Functions with Brain-inspired Temporal Development Mechanism(TD-MCL), enabling cognitive enhancement from simple to complex in Perception-Motor-Interaction(PMI) multiple cognitive task scenarios. The TD-MCL model proposes the sequential evolution of long-range connections between different cognitive modules to promote positive knowledge transfer, while using feedback-guided local connection inhibition and pruning to effectively eliminate redundancies in previous tasks, reducing energy consumption while preserving acquired knowledge. Experiments show that the proposed method can achieve continual learning capabilities while reducing network scale, without introducing regularization, replay, or freezing strategies, and achieving superior accuracy on new tasks compared to direct learning. The proposed method shows that the brain's developmental mechanisms offer a valuable reference for exploring biologically plausible, low-energy enhancements of general cognitive abilities.