Project description
Unravelling brain specialisation
Distinct regions in the brain perform specialised functions, yet the origin of this functional specialisation remains elusive. Funded by the European Research Council, the DEEPFUNC project aims to investigate the mysteries surrounding functional specialisation in the human brain, particularly within the visual pathway. Through a multidisciplinary approach that involves artificial neural networks, researchers will investigate the features leading to functional specialisation and explore the impact of visual experience on development. The research aims to provide new insights into how the brain is organised in relation to the complex and dynamic processing demands that the brain encounters when dealing with everyday activities and experiences.
Objective
Over the last few decades, neuroscientists have identified multiple brain regions that perform distinct, often highly specialized functions such as processing faces, understanding language, and even thinking about what other people are thinking. Despite our increased understanding of the computations performed in these regions, the precise causes and origins of functional specialization in the brain are still a mystery and not accessible to direct experimental approaches.
Here, we propose to combine cutting-edge computational modelling, large-scale sampling of naturalistic behaviour and human neuroimaging to overcome these limitations. Focusing on visual perception, we will exploit the latest advances in artificial neural networks to probe three critical aspects of functional specialization in the ventral visual pathway: First, by training networks on natural and artificial visual categories and identifying which features result in functional specialization, we will characterize what it is about a visual category that leads to functional specialization. Second, we will leverage large-scale egocentric datasets of infant and adult visual input to test how visual experience and natural input statistics shape functional specialization during development. Third, we will ask why certain neural features become specialized for high-level visual categories in the human visual cortex in the first place. Critically, for each of these aspects, we will close the loop and directly test and validate its predictions in the human brain.
Our project will shed light on functional specialization from a new angle – by relating functional specialization to the computational constraints of performing tasks in the real world. Using this novel approach, our project tackles some of the most fundamental questions about the functional organization of the human mind and brain – the what, how and why of functional specialization.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
35390 Giessen
Germany