Researchers Learn How The Brain Sees Objects

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered how the brain learns to recognize objects. 

The research could pave the way to making robots that “see”. 

"One of the central questions of how the brain recognizes objects and faces is that you never essentially see the same image twice," James DiCarlo, an associate professor of neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

DiCarlo said humans are able to easily recognize a dog, for instance, whether it is lying down, running, begging for food or wagging its tail.  

"The pattern of light in your eyes is never the same when you view your wife or your dog, yet you can still recognize that as the person or creature that you love," he said.

Scientists believe humans do it by collecting many different images of the same object over short periods of time.

"Even though we don’t see the same images twice, nearby images in time tend to be images of the same object," DiCarlo said in a Reuters interview.

To test the idea, DiCarlo conducted experiments on two monkeys by deceiving them with teacups substituted for images of sailboats. The researchers attached electrodes to the areas of the brain that work to recognize objects.  Specifically, they were examining changes in neurons that recognize sailboat images. 

The monkeys were rewarded with treats if they looked at a video display of several different sailboats.  Occasionally, when the monkeys looked away, the researchers substituted one of the sailboat pictures for an image of a teacup in only one place.  Over time, some of the neurons in the monkeys’ brains responsible for sailboat images responded instead to the teacup.

The study follows similar human experiments, and suggests this is likely how people learn to recognize and categorize the objects they see, DiCarlo said.

The findings give a glimpse into the brain’s visual learning system, and will assist scientists in building computers with comparable vision-like systems.

"There’s a lot of tasks that are essentially mindless for humans, but that only humans can do," DiCarlo said, such as searching for explosives, inspecting products on assembly lines and examining radiology images.

DiCarlo’s research was published Thursday in the journal Science.

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