Visual representations in the human brain are aligned with large language models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Doerig, Adrien, Kietzmann, Tim C, Allen, Emily, Wu, Yihan, Naselaris, Thomas, Kay, Kendrick, Charest, Ian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
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author Doerig, Adrien
Kietzmann, Tim C
Allen, Emily
Wu, Yihan
Naselaris, Thomas
Kay, Kendrick
Charest, Ian
author_facet Doerig, Adrien
Kietzmann, Tim C
Allen, Emily
Wu, Yihan
Naselaris, Thomas
Kay, Kendrick
Charest, Ian
contents The human brain extracts complex information from visual inputs, including objects, their spatial and semantic interrelations, and their interactions with the environment. However, a quantitative approach for studying this information remains elusive. Here, we test whether the contextual information encoded in large language models (LLMs) is beneficial for modelling the complex visual information extracted by the brain from natural scenes. We show that LLM embeddings of scene captions successfully characterise brain activity evoked by viewing the natural scenes. This mapping captures selectivities of different brain areas, and is sufficiently robust that accurate scene captions can be reconstructed from brain activity. Using carefully controlled model comparisons, we then proceed to show that the accuracy with which LLM representations match brain representations derives from the ability of LLMs to integrate complex information contained in scene captions beyond that conveyed by individual words. Finally, we train deep neural network models to transform image inputs into LLM representations. Remarkably, these networks learn representations that are better aligned with brain representations than a large number of state-of-the-art alternative models, despite being trained on orders-of-magnitude less data. Overall, our results suggest that LLM embeddings of scene captions provide a representational format that accounts for complex information extracted by the brain from visual inputs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2209_11737
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Visual representations in the human brain are aligned with large language models
Doerig, Adrien
Kietzmann, Tim C
Allen, Emily
Wu, Yihan
Naselaris, Thomas
Kay, Kendrick
Charest, Ian
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Neurons and Cognition
The human brain extracts complex information from visual inputs, including objects, their spatial and semantic interrelations, and their interactions with the environment. However, a quantitative approach for studying this information remains elusive. Here, we test whether the contextual information encoded in large language models (LLMs) is beneficial for modelling the complex visual information extracted by the brain from natural scenes. We show that LLM embeddings of scene captions successfully characterise brain activity evoked by viewing the natural scenes. This mapping captures selectivities of different brain areas, and is sufficiently robust that accurate scene captions can be reconstructed from brain activity. Using carefully controlled model comparisons, we then proceed to show that the accuracy with which LLM representations match brain representations derives from the ability of LLMs to integrate complex information contained in scene captions beyond that conveyed by individual words. Finally, we train deep neural network models to transform image inputs into LLM representations. Remarkably, these networks learn representations that are better aligned with brain representations than a large number of state-of-the-art alternative models, despite being trained on orders-of-magnitude less data. Overall, our results suggest that LLM embeddings of scene captions provide a representational format that accounts for complex information extracted by the brain from visual inputs.
title Visual representations in the human brain are aligned with large language models
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Neurons and Cognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.11737