September 2024
Volume 24, Issue 10
Open Access
Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting Abstract  |   September 2024
The Effect of Low Acuity in Infancy on Developing Ventral Visual Stream Representations
Author Affiliations & Notes
  • Áine T. Dineen
    Trinity College Dubin
  • Cliona O'Doherty
    Trinity College Dubin
  • Anna Truzzi
    Trinity College Dubin
  • Anna Kravchenko
    Trinity College Dubin
  • Lorijn Zaadnoordijk
    Trinity College Dubin
  • Alex R. Wade
    University of York
  • Graham King
    Trinity College Dubin
  • Enna-Louise D’Arcy
    Trinity College Dubin
  • Jessica White
    Trinity College Dubin
  • Tamrin Holloway
    Trinity College Dubin
  • Chiara Caldinelli
    Trinity College Dubin
  • Adrienne Foran
    The Rotunda Hospital, Dublin
    Children's Health Ireland at Temple Street, Dublin
  • Eleanor J. Molloy
    Trinity College Dubin
    The Coombe Hospital, Dublin
  • Rhodri Cusack
    Trinity College Dubin
  • Footnotes
    Acknowledgements  This research was supported by an ERC Advanced Grant 2017 FOUNDCOG 787981 and an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship GOIPG/2023/2479. We wish to thank Sojo Joseph, radiographer at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience for his contribution to MRI acquisition.
Journal of Vision September 2024, Vol.24, 1416. doi:https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.24.10.1416
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      Áine T. Dineen, Cliona O'Doherty, Anna Truzzi, Anna Kravchenko, Lorijn Zaadnoordijk, Alex R. Wade, Graham King, Enna-Louise D’Arcy, Jessica White, Tamrin Holloway, Chiara Caldinelli, Adrienne Foran, Eleanor J. Molloy, Rhodri Cusack; The Effect of Low Acuity in Infancy on Developing Ventral Visual Stream Representations. Journal of Vision 2024;24(10):1416. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.24.10.1416.

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      © ARVO (1962-2015); The Authors (2016-present)

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Abstract

The seemingly deficient blurry beginnings of infant visual experience have been hypothesised to have adaptive value. Initial low acuity could serve as an inductive bias strengthening more holistic representations, contributing to the robustness of the developed visual system. Computational models of visual recognition using deep neural networks (DNNs) have supported this in principle, showing that training DNNs initially with blurred images broadens their receptive fields and improves face recognition performance. However, whether low acuity actually affects developing representations in humans has not been tested. We therefore characterised representational geometry in the ventral visual stream of infants using functional MRI (fMRI), and compared it to DNNs trained with various levels of smoothing. fMRI was acquired in awake 2- and 9-month-old infants (N=134) and adults (N=24) as they viewed 36 looming pictures, comprising 3 examples of 12 categories. To model the effect of initial low-acuity, we trained DNNs (ResNet-50) on 1000 categories of objects (ImageNet), with six DNNs receiving images smoothed to different degrees (gaussian blur with sigma ranging from 0-6 pixels). Representational similarity analysis was used to compare the representational geometry of each layer of the DNNs with that of the early and late regions of the ventral visual stream. For both regions, the infant groups and adults shared a considerable portion of representational geometry with the DNNs (Spearman r~0.2-0.5). The degree of image smoothing during DNN training substantially modulated the correspondence while the degree of smoothing during DNN inference had little effect. At 2-months, representational geometry was more similar to DNNs trained with greater smoothing compared to older age groups, supporting the hypothesis that developing ventral visual representations are shaped by initial low acuity. More generally, we demonstrate that awake infant fMRI and computational modelling synergise to provide unique insights into the developmental origins of the visual system.

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