Model Connectomes: A Generational Approach to Data-Efficient Language Models

Biological neural networks are shaped both by evolution across generations and by individual learning within an organism’s lifetime, whereas standard artificial neural networks undergo a single, large training procedure without inherited constraints. In this work, we propose a framework that incorporates this crucial generational dimension—an "outer loop" of evolution that shapes the "inner loop" of learning—so that artificial networks better mirror the multi-generational and developmental processes of biological organisms. Focusing on language, we train a model that inherits a "model connectome" from the outer loop before exposing it to a developmental-scale corpus of 100M tokens. Compared with two closely matched control models, we show that the connectome model performs better or on par on natural language processing tasks as well as alignment to human behavior and brain data. These findings suggest that a model connectome serves as an efficient prior for learning in low-data regimes – narrowing the gap between single-generation artificial models and biologically evolved neural networks.