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What computer brains actually learn about vision?

Adriano Lima, Yuchen Hou, Michael Beyeler, Marius Schneider

May 22, 2026

Researchers built computer models that predict neural firing in mouse visual cortex from video, then looked beyond prediction accuracy to see what these models actually learned. Models with the same prediction score differed dramatically in how they encoded orientation, contrast, and motion—some matched the geometry of real brain populations, others didn't. For using these digital twins to design experiments, identical performance hides fundamentally different solutions.
Published as Beyond Neural Activity Prediction: Probing Latent Representations in Mouse V1 Digital Twins arXiv:2605.23122
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