Neuronal Learning of Invariant Object Representation in the Ventral Visual Stream Is Not Dependent on Reward
Name
Li-2012-Neuronal Learning of.pdf
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1.68 MB
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Author(s)
Li, Nuo
DiCarlo, James
Date Issued
May 2012
Journal
Journal of Neuroscience
Publisher
Society for Neuroscience
Citation
Li, N., and J. J. DiCarlo. “Neuronal Learning of Invariant Object Representation in the Ventral Visual Stream Is Not Dependent on Reward.” Journal of Neuroscience 32.19 (2012): 6611–6620.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Neurons at the top of primate ventral visual stream [inferior temporal cortex (IT)] have selectivity for objects that is highly tolerant to variation in the object's appearance on the retina. Previous nonhuman primate (Macaca mulatta) studies suggest that this neuronal tolerance is at least partly supported by the natural temporal contiguity of visual experience, because altering that temporal contiguity can robustly alter adult IT position and size tolerance. According to that work, it is the statistics of the subject's visual experience, not the subject's reward, that instruct the specific images that IT treats as equivalent. But is reward necessary for gating this type of learning in the ventral stream? Here we show that this is not the case—temporal tolerance learning proceeds at the same rate, regardless of reward magnitude and regardless of the temporal co-occurrence of reward, even in a behavioral task that does not require the subject to engage the object images. This suggests that the ventral visual stream uses autonomous, fully unsupervised mechanisms to constantly leverage all visual experience to help build its invariant object representation.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.3786-11.2012
