Noninvasive precision modulation of high-level neural population activity via natural vision perturbations

2025/06/05 by Guy Gaziv, Sarah Goulding, Gaziv, Guy +8 · 2 voices · 1 citation
Neuroscience · #Visual perception and processing mechanisms #Neural dynamics and brain function #Face Recognition and Perception

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.05633

Abstract

Precise control of neural activity -- modulating target neurons deep in the brain while leaving nearby neurons unaffected -- is an outstanding challenge in neuroscience, generally approached using invasive techniques. This study investigates the possibility of precisely and noninvasively modulating neural activity in the high-level primate ventral visual stream via perturbations on one's natural visual feed. When tested on macaque inferior temporal (IT) neural populations, we found quantitative agreement between the model-predicted and biologically realized effect: strong modulation concentrated on targeted neural sites. We extended this to demonstrate accurate injection of experimenter-chosen neural population patterns via subtle perturbations applied on the background of typical natural visual feeds. These results highlight that current machine-executable models of the ventral stream can now design noninvasive, visually-delivered, possibly imperceptible neural interventions at the resolution of individual neurons.

Cited by

• Targeted perturbations reveal brain-like local coding axes in robustified, but not standard, ANN-based brain models

Discussions

• No implants. No electrodes. Just light. A way to modulate #brainactivity by subtly changing what you see. By tweaking natural images, they could target specific #neurons deep in the visual stream, non [bsky, 25 points, 1 comments]
• this is wild and amazing! selective modulation of neurons in the ventral visual stream noninvasively, just by changing the visual input. i've recently been saying that the senses are a powerful, overl [bsky, 23 points, 2 comments]

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