Visual input statistics and behavioral relevance jointly constrain higher visual cortex organization.
Journal:
Cognitive neuroscience
Published Date:
Nov 23, 2025
Abstract
Ritchie and colleagues propose that the functional organization of higher visual cortex is best understood through the lens of behavioral relevance, advocating for a shift away from theories that center around category selectivity. Building on this, I suggest the statistical structure of visual inputs acts as an additional critical constraint on visual cortex, and that a complete understanding of visual system organization must account for input statistics and how they interact with behavioral relevance. I discuss this using cortical food selectivity as a case study, and additionally describe how deep neural networks can provide new avenues for testing these theories.
Authors
Keywords
No keywords available for this article.
