AI Learns Object Recognition from Rat Vision

Science & Technology Science

Posted by NewAdmin on 2025-01-29 11:12:30 |

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"Rats, often considered poor models of vision, actually display sophisticated abilities that force us to rethink the potential of their visual system and, simultaneously, the limitations of artificial neural networks," explains Zoccolan."This suggests that they could be a good model for studying human or primate visual capabilities, which have a highly developed visual cortex, even compared to artificial neural networks, which, despite their success at replicating human visual performance, often do so using very different strategies."
 The study also suggests that understanding better the mechanisms by which rats and, more generally, mammals recognize objects through vision in complex or ambiguous settings could inspire improvements in artificial intelligence models. Simultaneously, it underscores that even the visual systems of rats, nocturnal animals that prefer other highly developed senses such as smell to explore the world, are quite advanced.The results reveal that, even compared to advances in artificial intelligence, rat vision is extremely efficient and adaptable. As the complexity of image manipulations increases, the neural network requires more resources to compete with rat discrimination ability. Additionally, rats and artificial intelligence employ different image processing strategies, suggesting that neural networks still have something to learn from neuroscience.Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) are the most advanced tools for image recognition and are inspired, at least in part, by the functioning of the mammalian visual cortex. A CNN consists of multiple layers, each playing a specific role in the visual analysis process. The initial layers process simple image features, such as edges and contrasts, while the intermediate and final layers combine this information to recognize more complex structures and identify objects within images.
 For this study, SISSA researchers carried out behavioral experiments, training rats with a reward to recognize and discriminate objects under increasingly challenging conditions. For instance, objects were rotated, resized, or partially obscured to assess both the animals' and the neural networks' ability to recognize them despite these transformations. 

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