Title Information
Title
Aligning deep neural networks with biological vision
Type of Resource (primo)
dissertations
Name: Personal
Name Part
Rodriguez, Ivan Felipe
Role
Role Term: Text
creator
Name: Personal
Name Part
Serre, Thomas
Role
Role Term: Text
Advisor
Name: Personal
Name Part
Sheinberg, David
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Personal
Name Part
Warren, William
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Corporate
Name Part
Brown University. Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences
Role
Role Term: Text
sponsor
Origin Information
Copyright Date
2025
Physical Description
Extent
28, 157 p.
digitalOrigin
born digital
Note: thesis
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2025
Genre (aat)
theses
Abstract
This work explores to what extent deep neural networks (DNNs) can serve as accurate and biologically meaningful models of human visual processing. While DNNs have achieved remarkable success in visual recognition benchmarks such as ImageNet, recent findings reveal that increasing model performance on these tasks does not necessarily translate into better alignment with neural activity in the primate brain or human behavioral patterns. The first part of this work revisits the long-held assumption that performance on categorization tasks correlates with neural predictivity. Using benchmark datasets and neural recordings from inferotemporal cortex, we show that this relationship has broken down in modern architectures, which are increasingly less brain-like despite improved accuracy. In response, we propose a harmonization approach that encourages alignment between model visual strategies and those used by humans by constraining the training routine with human behavioral data. Although this strategy improves alignment with neural and behavioral data, it remains biologically implausible. To address this limitation, we develop a new class of models grounded in anatomical constraints and inspired by the classical HMAX framework. These models incorporate architectural features like scale-band processing and feedback, enabling improved generalization to naturalistic images and more robust alignment with neural recordings.
Subject
Topic
Computer Vision
Subject (fast) (authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/00866547")
Topic
Cognitive science
Subject
Topic
Neural Networks
Language
Language Term (ISO639-2B)
English
Record Information
Record Content Source (marcorg)
RPB
Record Creation Date (encoding="iso8601")
20260427