{"title":"Efficient attention mechanisms for large language models.","authors":"Yutao Sun, Zhenyu Li, Yike Zhang, Tengyu Pan, Bowen Dong, Yuyi Guo, Jianyong Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101594","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2026.101594","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Transformer-based architectures have become the prevailing backbone of large language models. However, the time and memory complexity of self-attention remains a fundamental obstacle to efficient long-context modeling. To address this limitation, recent research has introduced two principal categories of efficient attention mechanisms. Linear attention methods achieve linear complexity through kernel approximations, recurrent formulations, or fast-weight dynamics, thereby enabling scalable inference with reduced computational overhead. Sparse attention techniques, in contrast, limit attention computation to selected subsets of tokens based on fixed or dynamic strategies, enhancing efficiency while preserving contextual coverage. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of these developments, integrating both algorithmic innovations and hardware-level considerations. In addition, we analyze the incorporation of efficient attention into large-scale pre-trained language models, including both architectures built entirely on efficient attention and hybrid designs that combine local and global components. By aligning theoretical foundations with practical deployment strategies, this work aims to serve as a foundational reference for advancing the design of scalable and efficient language models.</p>","PeriodicalId":36242,"journal":{"name":"Patterns","volume":"7 9","pages":"101594"},"PeriodicalIF":10.8,"publicationDate":"2026-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13576653/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148978212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PatternsPub Date : 2026-06-30eCollection Date: 2026-07-10DOI: 10.1016/j.patter.2026.101592
Esra Busra Isik, Yusuf Hakan Usta, Maryam Riazi, Haozhe Liu, William Roach, Hongpeng Zhou, Anna Nicolaou, Magnus Rattray, Sokratia Georgaka
{"title":"Multimodal spatial omics: From data acquisition to computational integration.","authors":"Esra Busra Isik, Yusuf Hakan Usta, Maryam Riazi, Haozhe Liu, William Roach, Hongpeng Zhou, Anna Nicolaou, Magnus Rattray, Sokratia Georgaka","doi":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101592","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101592","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recent developments in spatial omics technologies have enabled the generation of high-dimensional molecular data, including transcriptomics, proteomics, and epigenomics, within their spatial tissue context, either through co-profiling on the same slice or through profiling across serial tissue sections. These datasets, which are often complemented by images, have given rise to multimodal frameworks that capture both the cellular and architectural complexity of tissues across multiple molecular layers. Integration of such multimodal data poses significant computational challenges due to differences in scale, resolution, and data modality. In this review, we present a comprehensive overview of computational methods developed to integrate multimodal spatial omics and imaging datasets. We highlight key algorithmic principles underlying these methods, ranging from probabilistic to the latest deep learning approaches.</p>","PeriodicalId":36242,"journal":{"name":"Patterns","volume":"7 7","pages":"101592"},"PeriodicalIF":10.8,"publicationDate":"2026-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13366528/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148449700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PatternsPub Date : 2026-06-29eCollection Date: 2026-07-10DOI: 10.1016/j.patter.2026.101587
Ben Y Reis, William G La Cava
{"title":"Design principles for integrated AI alignment.","authors":"Ben Y Reis, William G La Cava","doi":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101587","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101587","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As AI adoption accelerates across human society, the problem of aligning AI models with human preferences remains a grand challenge. Currently, the AI alignment field is deeply divided between behavioral and representational approaches, resulting in narrowly aligned models that are more vulnerable to increasingly deceptive misalignment threats. In the face of this fragmentation, we propose an integrated vision for the future of the field. Drawing on related lessons from immunology and cybersecurity, we lay out a set of design principles for the development of integrated alignment frameworks that combine the complementary strengths of diverse alignment approaches through deep integration and adaptive coevolution. We highlight the importance of strategic diversity-deploying orthogonal alignment and misalignment detection approaches to avoid homogeneous pipelines that risk being \"doomed to success.\" We also recommend steps for greater unification of the AI alignment research field itself, through cross-collaboration, open model weights, and shared community resources.</p>","PeriodicalId":36242,"journal":{"name":"Patterns","volume":"7 7","pages":"101587"},"PeriodicalIF":10.8,"publicationDate":"2026-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13366518/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148449586","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PatternsPub Date : 2026-06-26eCollection Date: 2026-08-14DOI: 10.1016/j.patter.2026.101593
Shogo Ohmae, Keiko Ohmae
{"title":"Brain-AI convergence: Generative world models and hierarchical attention for human intelligence.","authors":"Shogo Ohmae, Keiko Ohmae","doi":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101593","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101593","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recent advances in general-purpose AI provide new insights into how the neocortex and cerebellum, despite their uniform circuit architectures, support diverse functions and human intelligence. Beyond the traditional focus on visual processing, this paper offers a cross-domain comparison of the brain and AI through the lens of world-model-based computation. We argue that both the neocortex and cerebellum predict future world states from past inputs and construct predictive world models through prediction-error learning. These predictive world models are repurposed for sensory comprehension and motor output generation, thereby supporting multi-domain capabilities. Underlying these capabilities and even human-like adaptive intelligence, the neocortex implements hierarchical attention-based processing. Interestingly, autoregressive generative models in transformer-based AI have independently converged on similar computational principles. Together, these shared mechanisms suggest a common computational foundation through which uniform circuits can support cross-domain high-level intelligence in both biological and artificial systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":36242,"journal":{"name":"Patterns","volume":"7 8","pages":"101593"},"PeriodicalIF":10.8,"publicationDate":"2026-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13494634/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148799026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PatternsPub Date : 2026-06-24eCollection Date: 2026-09-11DOI: 10.1016/j.patter.2026.101595
Verena Chung, Rongrong Chai, Hallie Swan, Maria Diaz, Shysta Bynum, Adam Hindman, Jacob Albrecht, Serghei Mangul, Susheel Varma, Jay Hodgson, Solveig K Sieberts, Alberto Pepe, Luca Foschini, Thomas Schaffter, Gaia Andreoletti
{"title":"OpenChallenges: A FAIR-aligned, centralized platform for crowdsourced challenges in biomedical research.","authors":"Verena Chung, Rongrong Chai, Hallie Swan, Maria Diaz, Shysta Bynum, Adam Hindman, Jacob Albrecht, Serghei Mangul, Susheel Varma, Jay Hodgson, Solveig K Sieberts, Alberto Pepe, Luca Foschini, Thomas Schaffter, Gaia Andreoletti","doi":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101595","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101595","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Open community challenges are critical for benchmarking computational methods in biomedical research, but the landscape is highly fragmented. Currently, over 2,000 challenges exist across a large and fragmented set of platforms, yet no centralized registry exists to index them. To address this, we developed OpenChallenges, a centralized, FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable)-aligned hub that aggregates and standardizes challenge metadata from diverse sources into a single, searchable registry. By implementing an updated metadata model explicitly mapped to FAIR dimensions, the platform advances challenge discoverability. A metadata completeness scoring framework assigns each challenge one of four tiers (baseline, standard, comprehensive, and gold standard), providing users with a transparent measure of metadata richness and guiding community curation priorities. Built on an open-source, API-driven architecture, OpenChallenges streamlines discovery, enhances visibility, and supports community-driven curation. This resource transforms a fragmented ecosystem into an interconnected knowledge base, advancing transparency in computational biology.</p>","PeriodicalId":36242,"journal":{"name":"Patterns","volume":"7 9","pages":"101595"},"PeriodicalIF":10.8,"publicationDate":"2026-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13576655/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148978284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PatternsPub Date : 2026-06-17eCollection Date: 2026-09-11DOI: 10.1016/j.patter.2026.101589
Andreas Fønss Møller, Jesper Grud Skat Madsen
{"title":"Disentangling covariate effects on single-cell-resolved epigenomes with DeepDive.","authors":"Andreas Fønss Møller, Jesper Grud Skat Madsen","doi":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101589","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101589","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Understanding the effects of individual biological factors from single-cell-resolved epigenomic data is hindered by multicollinearity, particularly in human cohorts. We introduce DeepDive, a deep-learning framework designed to systematically disentangle known and unknown sources of variation in single-nucleus ATAC-seq data. DeepDive accurately reconstructs chromatin accessibility, outperforms state-of-the-art methods with incomplete covariate information, and robustly recovers true biological signals from even highly entangled covariates, unlocking counterfactual, \"what-if,\" analyses. Applying DeepDive to pancreatic islet cells, we perform counterfactual analyses to prioritize covariates associated with a type 2 diabetes-linked beta-cell subtype and nominate transcription regulators. DeepDive offers a powerful and unbiased tool for mechanistic discovery in complex human disease cohorts.</p>","PeriodicalId":36242,"journal":{"name":"Patterns","volume":"7 9","pages":"101589"},"PeriodicalIF":10.8,"publicationDate":"2026-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13576652/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148978222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Density-based longitudinal neuron tracking in high-density electrophysiological recordings.","authors":"Yue Huang, Hanbo Wang, Jiaming Cao, Yu Chen, Xuanning Wang, Yujie Zhao, Hengkun Ren, Qiang Zheng, Jianing Yu","doi":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101590","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101590","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Tracking neurons across days in high-density extracellular recordings is essential for investigating the mechanisms of learning and representational drift. However, in weeks-long recordings, identifying matches across sessions is hindered by changes in spike waveforms and unit turnover. We introduce DANT (density-based across-day neuron tracking), a framework that iterates between density-based clustering in feature space and probe-motion estimation inferred from provisional matches. The estimated motion is then used to reregister spike waveforms across sessions before clustering is recomputed in the next iteration. Within this loop, DANT learns a decision boundary from match and non-match labels and uses it in post hoc curation. Applied to weeks-long Neuropixels recordings from cortex and striatum in freely moving rats during reaction-time and self-timing tasks, DANT substantially increases match yield while maintaining a low false-positive rate relative to existing approaches. These results establish DANT as a general unsupervised solution for longitudinal tracking in chronic recordings.</p>","PeriodicalId":36242,"journal":{"name":"Patterns","volume":"7 8","pages":"101590"},"PeriodicalIF":10.8,"publicationDate":"2026-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13494646/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148799128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PatternsPub Date : 2026-06-16eCollection Date: 2026-09-11DOI: 10.1016/j.patter.2026.101588
Weiyi Qin, Yingci Liu-Swetz, Shiwei Tan, Hao Wang
{"title":"CLEAR-HPV: Interpretable concept discovery for human-papillomavirus-associated morphology in whole-slide histology.","authors":"Weiyi Qin, Yingci Liu-Swetz, Shiwei Tan, Hao Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101588","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101588","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Human papillomavirus (HPV) status is a critical determinant of prognosis and treatment response in head and neck and cervical cancers. Although attention-based multiple instance learning (MIL) achieves strong slide-level prediction for HPV-related whole-slide histopathology, it provides limited morphologic interpretability. To address this limitation, we introduce concept-level explainable attention-guided representation for HPV (CLEAR-HPV), a framework that restructures the MIL latent space to enable concept discovery without requiring concept labels during training. Within an attention-weighted latent space, CLEAR-HPV automatically discovers keratinizing, basaloid, and stromal morphologic concepts; generates spatial concept maps; and represents each slide with a compact concept-fraction vector. Its concept-fraction vectors preserve the predictive information of the original MIL embeddings while reducing the high-dimensional feature space (e.g., 1,536 dimensions) to only 10 interpretable concepts. CLEAR-HPV demonstrates consistent concept structure across The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)-HNSCC, TCGA-CESC, and Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) -HNSCC, providing compact, concept-level interpretability through a general, backbone-agnostic framework for attention-based MIL models of whole-slide histopathology.</p>","PeriodicalId":36242,"journal":{"name":"Patterns","volume":"7 9","pages":"101588"},"PeriodicalIF":10.8,"publicationDate":"2026-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13576518/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148978087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PatternsPub Date : 2026-06-12DOI: 10.1016/j.patter.2026.101585
Huixin Zhan, Jason H Moore
{"title":"Moving from disclosure to substance in AI transparency.","authors":"Huixin Zhan, Jason H Moore","doi":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101585","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101585","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>AI disclosure mandates have rapidly become standard in scientific publishing, a genuine success of scholarly self-governance. Yet across 10,000 bioRxiv preprints, disclosure tracks only modestly with code and data sharing. The next phase of policy should pair \"whether\" with \"how,\" alongside independent transparency requirements.</p>","PeriodicalId":36242,"journal":{"name":"Patterns","volume":"7 6","pages":"101585"},"PeriodicalIF":10.8,"publicationDate":"2026-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13280675/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148296574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PatternsPub Date : 2026-06-12DOI: 10.1016/j.patter.2026.101568
Abdullah Hasan Safir, Alan F Blackwell, Ramit Debnath
{"title":"Resisting epistemic loss in AI image generation.","authors":"Abdullah Hasan Safir, Alan F Blackwell, Ramit Debnath","doi":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101568","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.patter.2026.101568","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Hintze et al.'s recent study highlights the tendency of current-generation vision-language models to converge on overly generic outputs. We argue that considering AI imageries as epistemic artefact and AI-driven artistic practices as socio-cultural processes can provide better understandings around the implications of such conditions beyond merely technical aspects of image generation. Drawing from our ongoing research, we highlight the necessity of bringing the epistemic vulnerability of marginalized artists and users and their hierarchical relations with these tools into sociotechnical design conversations, and by doing so, to explore the possibility for pluriversal and just AI futures, particularly in the Global South.</p>","PeriodicalId":36242,"journal":{"name":"Patterns","volume":"7 6","pages":"101568"},"PeriodicalIF":10.8,"publicationDate":"2026-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13280676/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148296671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}