Northwest Labs B103 and Zoom
Seeing the same in different ways: neuronal responses to diverse visual styles
The primate brain is able to recognize objects in a variety of images, including photographs, line drawings, and cartoons. However, we do not fully understand how visual cortex enables this capability. To study this, we used deep generative networks to stimulate neurons in monkey brains, measuring their responses to optimized images with different visual characteristics. Our findings indicate that cortical neurons are acutely sensitive to visual attributes present in both abstract and photorealistic styles. This suggests that the robustness of visual perception is rooted at the microscopic level of neuronal columns.