Experimental architecture · active research

Dopamine

A small language-model architecture built to test a precise question: can representation, integration, memory, and output selection be implemented as separate, inspectable mechanisms rather than hidden inside one undifferentiated stream?

Architecture ↓ Recorded run ↓ GitHub ↗
Research boundary. Dopamine is an engineering prototype, not a claim of machine consciousness. Its biological vocabulary is an explicit design analogy used to separate computational roles. Comparative baselines, ablations, and independent replication are still pending.
22.38M
Parameters · v2 run
9
Sequence layers
512
Model dimension
1.4971
Validation BPB · step 2500
6.5 MB
Compressed model artifact
Current research branch · v3.12

An architecture made of observable roles.

The current branch combines topology-guided multi-field encoding, shared latent integration, sparse expert computation, and a stress-aware projection path. Select a component to inspect its computational role.

Signal path

Each stage has a narrower responsibility. The names are analogies; the implementation is standard PyTorch tensor computation.

Topology branch
Observed prototype trace · v2.0

A learning signal, not yet a comparative result.

The uploaded v2 run trained for 2,500 steps on the FineWeb-derived setup encoded in the script. Validation bits per byte fell from 4.1189 to 1.4971. That demonstrates end-to-end learning; it does not establish superiority over a matched transformer baseline.

Validation BPB across training

Lower is better
Dopamine v2 validation bits per byte across 2,500 training steps Validation BPB decreases from 4.1189 at step zero to 1.4971 at step 2500.

Recorded points: steps 0, 250, 500, …, 2500. No smoothing and no baseline substitution. CSV ↗ · JSON ↗

Run readout

modelDopamine v2.0
parameters22,377,550
training steps2,500
validation BPB4.1189 → 1.4971
compressed model6,495 KB
distilled resonance87.5 KB
perception gate μ0.1853
interpretationlearned signal · baseline pending
Evidence discipline

What the current evidence supports

  • The architecture executes and trains end to end in the recorded setup.
  • Validation BPB decreases consistently across the 2,500-step v2 trace.
  • Internal architecture signals — resonance state, perception gate, and axon stress — are instrumented and logged.
  • The model can export a compressed state artifact and a separately distilled resonance snapshot.

What remains unproven

  • No matched parameter-count baseline is included in the uploaded run.
  • No ablation isolates the contribution of each biological analogy.
  • No result demonstrates consciousness, subjective experience, or biological equivalence.
  • The v3.12 branch is still changing; its final efficiency and quality are unresolved.
Architecture lineage

One project, two experimental branches.

Dopamine has evolved through competing implementations rather than a single frozen story. The page keeps those branches distinct.

v2.0 · Consciousness as Medium

Resonance and perception branch

Tests whether memory can emerge from similarity between current representations and a non-parametric buffer of previous latent flow.

  • ResonanceBuffer with 64 EMA slots
  • PerceptionAgent cross-attention over current and past flow
  • Soma treated as a shared medium rather than a central processor
  • Recorded 2,500-step run shown above
v3.12 · Topology branch

Topology-guided morphology

Tests whether structural divergence measured from multiple latent views can modulate how local, mid-range, and global fields are mixed.

  • SemanticTopologyMap and plastic prototype recall
  • Shared Soma nucleus with prototype cross-attention
  • Top-2 mixture-of-experts blocks
  • Semantic loss, QAT, checkpointing, and H100/RTX execution paths
Open implementation

Read the architecture, not the mythology.

The repository exposes the training scripts, model components, and version history. The useful question is not whether the names sound biological; it is whether the separated mechanisms survive controlled comparison.