AI-derived Mechanisms of Human Vision: Annual Swartz Foundation Mind/Brain Lecture, March 30

James J. DiCarlo, MD, PhD, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will present the 2026 Swartz Foundation Mind/Brain Lecture on Monday, March 30, at 4 pm on Staller Center's Main Stage. His presentation, "AI-derived Mechanisms of Human Vision," will also be livestreamed at stonybrook.edu/live.

Over the past decade, neuroscience, cognitive science and computer science ("AI") converged to create deep neural network models intended to appropriately emulate and explain the mechanisms of primate core ventral visual processing, up to its deepest neural level, the inferior temporal cortex (IT). Because these leading neuroscientific emulator models - aka "digital twins" - are fully observable and machine-executable, they offer predictive and potential application power that prior conceptual models did not.

DiCarlo's work is aimed at asking if current digital twin models might support non-invasive, beneficial brain modulation. In this talk, he will discuss how a digital twin can be used to design spatial patterns of light energy that, when added to an organism's retinal input, result in precise, user-selectable modulation of the pattern of a population of IT neurons. As IT visual neural populations may underlie psychological affective states (e.g., mood and anxiety), this novel basic science may unlock a new, non-invasive application avenue of potential future human benefit.

DiCarlo is the Peter de Florez Professor of Systems and Computational Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also director of the MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence and investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.