Dense Associative Memory with Biased Patterns: A Replica Symmetric Analysis

Abstract We investigate dense higher-order associative memories in the high storage regime when the stored patterns are biased, namely when the entries of the patterns are not symmetrically distributed around zero. In this setting, the standard Hebbian prescription must be modified by recentering and rescaling the pattern entries, and an additional term must be introduced in the Hamiltonian to enforce consistency between the average activity of the network and that of the stored patterns. As a first step, we perform a signal-to-noise analysis in the zero-temperature limit and show that the bias reduces the effective storage capacity through a multiplicative correction factor $$(1-b^2)^P$$ ( 1 - b 2 ) P , while preserving the superlinear scaling with the system size. We then derive the quenched statistical pressure within the Replica Symmetric framework by means of Guerra’s interpolation method and obtain the corresponding self consistency equations for the relevant order parameters. The analytical treatment confirms the heuristic prediction of the signal-to-noise argument, taking to an attenuation of the signal or equivalent renormalization of the effective noise. Finally, we discuss the resulting phase behavior of the model and its implications for retrieval performance in the model.