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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2020.01.13.900837

Unsupervised changes in core object recognition behavioral performance are accurately predicted by unsupervised neural plasticity in inferior temporal cortex

Jia, X.·Hong, H.·DiCarlo, J. J.
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Abstract

Temporal continuity of object identity is a feature of natural visual input, and is potentially exploited -- in an unsupervised manner -- by the ventral visual stream to build the neural representation in inferior temporal (IT) cortex and IT-dependent core object recognition behavior. Here we investigated whether plasticity of individual IT neurons underlies human behavioral changes induced with unsupervised visual experience by building a single-neuron plasticity model combined with a previously established IT population-to-recognition-behavior linking model to predict human learning effects. We found that our model quite accurately predicted the mean direction, magnitude and time course of human performance changes. We also found a previously unreported dependency of the observed human performance change on the initial task difficulty. This result adds support to the hypothesis that tolerant core object recognition in human and non-human primates is instructed -- at least in part -- by naturally occurring unsupervised temporal contiguity experience.

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Jia, X., Hong, H., DiCarlo, J. J.. 2020-01-14. Unsupervised changes in core object recognition behavioral performance are accurately predicted by unsupervised neural plasticity in inferior temporal cortex. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.13.900837

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