Mick Bonner
@michaelfbonner
Assistant Professor @jhucogsci studying human vision using cognitive neuroscience and machine learning
Can we gain a deep understanding of neural representations through dimensionality reduction? Our new work shows that the visual representations of the human brain need to be understood in high dimensions. w/ @RajThrowaway42 & Brice Ménard. arxiv.org/abs/2409.06843#
I'm thrilled to see this preprint out! Lenny compellingly demonstrates, in a data-driven way, a coding scheme unifying distributed dimensions & category selectivity.➡️Higher visual cortex comprises many partially overlapping tuning maps that include but go beyond category tuning!
How is high-level visual cortex organized? In a new preprint with @martin_hebart & @KathaDobs, we show that category-selective areas encode a rich, multidimensional feature space 🌈 biorxiv.org/content/10.110… 🧵 1/n
Better artificial intelligence does not mean better models of biology Drew Linsley, Pinyuan Feng, Thomas Serre arxiv.org/abs/2504.16940…
Exciting new preprint from the lab: “Adopting a human developmental visual diet yields robust, shape-based AI vision”. A most wonderful case where brain inspiration massively improved AI solutions. Work with @lu_zejin @martisamuser and Radoslaw Cichy arxiv.org/abs/2507.03168
Excited to announce that this paper is now out in @ScienceAdvances science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
What do artificial and biological vision have in common? Shared architectures? Shared task objectives? In this preprint, we suggest a more general explanation: they share universal dimensions of natural image representation.
Very happy to announce that our paper comparing dimensions in human and DNN representations is now out in @NatMachIntell nature.com/articles/s4225…
What makes humans similar or different to AI? In a new study, led by @florianmahner and @lukas_mut and w/ @umuguc, we took a deep look at the factors underlying their representational alignment, with surprising results. arxiv.org/abs/2406.19087 🧵
What shapes the topography of high-level visual cortex? Excited to share a new pre-print addressing this question with connectivity-constrained interactive topographic networks, titled "Retinotopic scaffolding of high-level vision", w/ Marlene Behrmann & David Plaut. 🧵 ↓ 1/n
Now out in Nature Human Behaviour @NatureHumBehav: “End-to-end topographic networks as models of cortical map formation and human visual behaviour”. Please check our NHB link: nature.com/articles/s4156…
Come to our CCN workshop! Blending iophysical constraints and neural networks. Topographical ANNs + and much more. @meenakshik93 @talia_konkle @PouyaBashivan @nmblauch @TimKietzmann @GwilliamsL @apurvaratan @jakhmack @Pieters_Tweet @martin_schrimpf Andrew Miri Nabil Imam
Announcement: Workshop at #CCN2025 🧠 Modeling the Physical Brain: Spatial Organization & Biophysical Constraints 🗓️ Monday, Aug 11 | 🕦 11:30–18:00 CET |📍 Room A2.07 🔗 Register: tinyurl.com/CCN-physical-b… #NeuroAI @CogCompNeuro
Exciting new preprint from the lab, led by an amazing student, @ckelseyhan!
How do different brains create unique visual experiences from identical sensory input? New preprint w/ @MichaelFBonner: "High-dimensional structure underlying individual differences in naturalistic visual experience" 🧠 arxiv.org/abs/2505.12653
I'll be giving a talk tomorrow at the @VSSMtg workshop on The AI Revolution in Visual Science. Here is a preview of my outline. #vss2025
Our lab is present at #VSS2025, so let me highlight some of the things we have been up to with a talk and three posters. Would love to see you around! 🧵
Excited for #VSS2025! Check out this cool work from the lab.
Excited to be presenting this paper at #ICLR2025 this week @iclr_conf! Come check our poster if you want to know more!! 🧠🤖 📆 Thur, Apr, 24 3:00-5:30 - Poster session 2 (#64) 📄 bit.ly/4jISKES
**ecstatic** to share our @iclr_conf paper: sparse components distinguish visual pathways & their alignment to neural networks, with @Nancy_Kanwisher and @meenakshik93 (openreview.net/forum?id=IqHeD…) 1/n
In a study now out in @eLife, @GeorginJacob @PramodRT9 and I have some exciting results: a novel computation that helps the brain solve disparate visual tasks, a novel brain region that performs this computation....what's not to like?! Read on.... 1/n elifesciences.org/articles/93033
People talk a lot about objects, but what about the softness of a cushion, the greenness of an emerald, or the viscosity of oil? In our work just published @PNASNews, we shed light on how we make sense of the hundreds of materials around us. pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…
sandervanbree.com/posts/3215-whe… What does it mean when neural network dimensions converge? In this blog post I explore possible theoretical implications: