Representations Have Trajectories: Characterizing Temporal Representation Dynamics in Neural Networks

Overview & Synopsis

Recent work has shown that deep neural networks exhibit an implicit low-rank simplicity bias. In this paper, we investigate the questions that naturally arise from this observation. What are the temporal consequences of low-rank simplicity bias during optimization? How does representation geometry evolve throughout optimization rather than only at convergence? Do different neural architectures exhibit distinct geometric optimization behaviors? To answer these questions, we conduct a large-scale empirical study tracking representational geometry throughout training. We find that neural networks follow three recurring geometric trajectories: persistent high-rank, collapse-and-recovery, and persistent low-rank. We further identify Destructive Representation Collapse (DRC) as a pathological regime in which representations collapse to rank-one and fail to recover, leading to a sustained loss of representational capacity. While collapse-and-recovery is consistently associated with successful optimization in controlled settings, experiments on real-world models show that the relationship between geometric trajectories and optimization outcomes is configuration dependent. Overall, our findings suggest that representation geometry evolves dynamically during training and provide a new perspective on how deep neural networks learn.