Examples of biomimetic codecs and biomimetic coding techniques are described herein. Morphologically-adaptive coding networks can be developed in accordance with energy dissipation driven “heat” generated by application of training data. The morphologically-adaptive coding networks may be representative of common features expected in an input signal or data stream. Decoding may proceed using the morphologically-adaptive coding network. Morphologically-adaptive coding networks may be used as a cortex that can be shared for boosting multimedia data compression rates and/or increasing the encode-decode fidelity of information content while the features remain queryable in encoded form. Examples of the biomimetic codecs and biomimetic coding techniques provide a broad-based technology platform that can be used in context-IDed multimedia storage, pattern recognition, and high-performance computing/big data management, the hallmarks of web- and cloud-based systems.