A benchmark for cross-modal plasticity in artificial neural systems. Hypneum Lab — 2026.
bouba_sens studies how a 5-modality agent (audio, vision, tactile, gravity,
force) reorganises itself when one sensory channel is lost or degraded —
inspired by the cross-modal cortical recruitment observed in congenital and
late blindness (Amedi 2007, Merabet 2010, Heimler 2020).
- B-1 — Congenital gap: lesion pre-training yields better adaptation than lesion post-convergence.
- B-2 — MI migration: mutual information between surviving-modality neuroletters and the target label rises post-lesion.
- B-3 — Perceptive/proprioceptive asymmetry: losing vision/audio/tactile produces a quantitatively different plastic response than losing gravity/force.
§5.5 B-1 dose-response signature requires reformulation. The N9 Q3+ 10-seed re-run with the correct test (quadratic regression over LOCK_AFTER) returned sign p = 0.62, paired t-test p = 0.28 — verdict FINAL Retract per the Q3 pre-registered decision criteria. The earlier Q3 INTERIM verdict had used a Jonckheere-Terpstra test which the critic v2 review correctly flagged as the wrong test for a non-monotone (peaked) hypothesis ; fixing that and adding 5 more seeds collapsed the qualitative +0.0125 Sprint 10 peak to noise.
TMLR benchmarks-track submission is BLOCKED until §5.5 is
reformulated. Three reformulation drafts (A / B / C, conditional on
N12 outcome) are at docs/paper/§5.5-reformulation-draft.md.
Decision-of-record : ADR-0019.
N12 targeted subgroup replication (RUNNING). Pooled-v2 analysis
surfaced two candidate subgroups for replication — tactile-floor
and force-plus10 — at sub-threshold but consistent positive
shifts. N12 sweep (N=20 seeds, focused on those subgroups) is
running tonight on root@kx6tm-23, ETA ~07:30 morning. The N12
result picks which §5.5 reformulation draft (A / B / C) becomes the
paper text.
Multi-seed-first-class lesson promoted portfolio-wide. The Q3
collapse from a 5-seed qualitative claim to a 10-seed null is the
canonical evidence for the methodology rule that single-seed (or
under-seeded) claims are fragile. Adopted across nerve-wml,
dream-of-kiki, and this repo as a hard pre-publication gate.
No new positive finding is announced ; this update is an honest scope statement on what tonight's verdicts removed and what the running sweep may add back.
| Axis | Status |
|---|---|
| B-3 Me6 perceptive/proprioceptive asymmetry | PASS (5–6× threshold, architectural invariant — unchanged) |
| B-1 Me7 congenital gap (§5.5) | FINAL Retract (Q3+ 10-seed, ADR-0019) — reformulation in flight |
| B-2 Me3 MI migration | Null (estimator-resolved, unchanged from v0.5.5) |
| TMLR submission | BLOCKED until §5.5 reformulation lands |
| N12 subgroup replication | RUNNING (kx6tm-23, ~07:30 ETA) |
Cumulative on main HEAD 3fbeee7 : 156 commits, v0.5.9, 19
ADRs (0004–0019), 185+ tests, pooled-v2 analysis + N12 pre-reg
locked. Honest scope ; no overselling.
v0.5.5 (2026-04-23) — Paper v0.1 submit-ready. Sprints 0–17 closed, 14 ADRs (0004–0017), 185+ tests. 9 grids (150 cells each) on the 4.5-modal real Studyforrest Phase-2 bridge + 5 worlds synthetic.
- Paper draft :
docs/paper/paper-v0.1-draft.md - OSF registration :
10.17605/OSF.IO/Q6JYN, amendment v0.6 - Target venue : TMLR benchmarks track (primary), NeurIPS D&B (fallback)
Thresholds locked by OSF before the campaign : B-1 ≥ 0.05, B-2 ≥ 0.10, B-3 ≥ 0.02 ; no threshold changes across all 14 ADRs.
| Invariant | Threshold | Best grid-median | Seed-stability | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B-3 Me6 perceptive/proprio asymmetry | 0.02 | 0.109–0.125 (5.5–6.3×) | 5/5 pass | PASS every configuration, architectural invariant |
| B-1 Me7 congenital gap | 0.05 | +0.0125 (25 % of thr) | 3+/5 positive | Qualitative — only LOCK=100 + HARD on the real bridge (§5.5 Amedi dose-response) ; N8-Q3 5-seed interim verdict Retract 2026-05-11, see CHANGELOG — TMLR blocked, Q3+ 10-seed pending |
| B-2 Me3 MI migration | 0.10 | mean +0.033 ±0.047 bits | 0/5 cross threshold | Null — two independent estimators (Kraskov + MINE) agree within 0.1 bit |
F1 — B-3 is an architectural invariant. The perceptive /
proprioceptive asymmetry passes at 5–6× threshold across every
grid, every world, every seed, and is insensitive to every
plasticity control tested (LOCK_AFTER, transducer gating mode,
Gumbel tau, codebook freeze, HARD → GUMBEL phase transition).
B-3 is anchored as the empirical foundation of
dream-of-kiki/docs/specs/2026-05-20-biophysical-stratification.md
§4 (embodied sensorimotor grounding stratum). The B-1 Retract
(ADR-0019) is honoured — Stratum 4 explicitly anchors on B-3,
never B-1.
F2 — B-1 is qualitatively reproduced in exactly one
configuration. On the 4.5-modal real biological bridge,
constellation_lock_after=100 with a hard-binary transducer gate
produces a seed-stable +0.0125 Me7 (Sprint 10 peak, ADR-0013).
Every compound attempted since has preserved, weakened, or
destroyed this peak — never amplified it. The paper's central
empirical claim is this narrow : a frozen mux with hard
transducer gating is the minimal configuration that
qualitatively reproduces the Amedi T1/T2 asymmetry.
F3 — B-2 is below threshold, estimator-resolved. The earlier
"bimodal positive B-2 at tau=0.30" claim (ADR-0016) was retracted
after per-seed re-aggregation (ADR-0017 §14a). Sprint 17 replicates
the §6.3 Kraskov limit with MINE (Donsker-Varadhan) on the Sprint 10
peak grid : both estimators agree within 0.1 bit that B-2 does not
exceed threshold on any seed. The remaining ambiguity concerns
probe shape (1-D mean-pool vs full (B, d_fused)), not estimator
choice — declared follow-up for paper v0.2.
Full trail : docs/adr/0004 through 0017. Every verdict,
retraction, and scope change is recorded inline with its grid
commit.
uv sync --all-extras
uv run bouba-sens version # bouba_sens 0.5.5
uv run pytest # 185+ items, all green
# Single cell
uv run bouba-sens lesion --world gaussian --seed 0 --modality audio \
--timing T1 --snr-init 0 --snr-floor -20
# Single grid (≈20 min on M3 Ultra, 5-way seed concurrency)
WORLD=studyforrest LOCK_AFTER=100 STEPS_TRAIN=200 STEPS_LESION=100 \
OUT_ROOT=runs/sprint10_peak METRICS="Me1,Me2,Me3" \
bash scripts/run_grid.sh
# One-command reproduction of every grid cited in the paper (~8 h)
bash scripts/reproduce_paper_v01.sh
# Verify released artefacts byte-for-byte
uv run python scripts/sha256_manifest.py
diff <(jq -S . reports/MANIFEST.json) <(jq -S . reports/MANIFEST.json.released)- Python 3.14
- PyTorch ≥ 2.5
nerve-wmlv1.5.3+ (protocol + methodology: Kraskov, MINE, bootstrap CI, null model permutation — Hypneum Lab, DOI10.5281/zenodo.19666405)
- Amedi et al. 2007 — Shape conveyed by visual-to-auditory sensory substitution activates LOC (Nat Neurosci).
- Heimler & Amedi 2020 — Revisiting adaptive and maladaptive effects of crossmodal plasticity (Neuroscience).
- Röder et al. 2021 — Sensitive periods for functional specialization (PNAS).
- Alper & Averbuch-Elor 2023 — Kiki or Bouba? Sound symbolism in VLMs (NeurIPS).
- Girdhar et al. 2023 — ImageBind: One Embedding Space (CVPR).
- Ma et al. 2022 — Are Multimodal Transformers Robust to Missing Modality? (CVPR).
- Liang et al. 2022 — MultiBench (NeurIPS D&B).
- Keller & Mrsic-Flogel 2018 — Predictive Processing: A Canonical Cortical Computation (Neuron).
MIT. See LICENSE.
See CITATION.cff.