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This research challenges the conventional assumption that high-weight neurons are inherently critical for image classification accuracy, revealing a nonlinear relationship where low-weight neurons also contribute significantly to model performance. The study provides empirical evidence on neuron importance through perturbation and ablation experiments, offering refined insights essential for developing more effective pruning strategies and enhancing interpretability in deep learning models.
Are the High-weight Neurons the Important Ones in Image Classification Neural Networks?
arXiv:2607.25529v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As neural network models for image classification advance, neurons play critical roles in pruning, backdoor defense, and interpretability. Yet existing work lacks clarity on the weight-importance relationship. We address this with a neuron importance assessment method using three experiments: quantifying overlap between high-weight and accuracy-impacting neurons, analyzing high-weight neuron perturbation effects, and testing post-retraining accuracy after high-weight neuron ablation. Experiments on CIFAR-10 and Mini-ImageNet reveal key patterns. Overlap analysis shows top 10\% high-weight neurons overlap with important ones by only about 25\% at maximum, dropping further in subsequent intervals. Perturbation tests find top 10\% high-weight neurons cause 45-80\% accuracy degradation under certain operations compared to 3-7\% for random perturbations, but a third of them show minimal impact. Ablation-retraining results show removing top 10\% high-weight neurons leaves accuracy 10-20\% below baseline with no recovery, while ablating top 0.1\% allows near-full recovery. Notably, some low-weight intervals show 10-17\% degradation when perturbed, comparable to mid-range high-weight neurons. These results confirm not all high-weight neurons are important: their importance is nonlinear. Low-weight neurons also contribute significantly. This challenges weight-importance equivalence, offering refined neuron role insights. It supports applications like encryption prioritizing critical high-weight neurons and pruning removing non-critical ones, advancing neural network analysis.
Title:Are the High-weight Neurons the Important Ones in Image Classification Neural Networks?
Abstract:As neural network models for image classification advance, neurons play critical roles in pruning, backdoor defense, and interpretability. Yet existing work lacks clarity on the weight-importance relationship. We address this with a neuron importance assessment method using three experiments: quantifying overlap between high-weight and accuracy-impacting neurons, analyzing high-weight neuron perturbation effects, and testing post-retraining accuracy after high-weight neuron ablation. Experiments on CIFAR-10 and Mini-ImageNet reveal key patterns. Overlap analysis shows top 10\% high-weight neurons overlap with important ones by only about 25\% at maximum, dropping further in subsequent intervals. Perturbation tests find top 10\% high-weight neurons cause 45-80\% accuracy degradation under certain operations compared to 3-7\% for random perturbations, but a third of them show minimal impact. Ablation-retraining results show removing top 10\% high-weight neurons leaves accuracy 10-20\% below baseline with no recovery, while ablating top 0.1\% allows near-full recovery. Notably, some low-weight intervals show 10-17\% degradation when perturbed, comparable to mid-range high-weight neurons. These results confirm not all high-weight neurons are important: their importance is nonlinear. Low-weight neurons also contribute significantly. This challenges weight-importance equivalence, offering refined neuron role insights. It supports applications like encryption prioritizing critical high-weight neurons and pruning removing non-critical ones, advancing neural network analysis.
Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
arXiv:2607.25529 [cs.AI]
(or arXiv:2607.25529v1 [cs.AI] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.25529 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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