Conference wrap-ups are about science. And #VSS2026 had some GREAT science. But now that VSS is (sadly) over, what I really want to celebrate is our community. The old and new (!!) friends, the science talks at 1am, the tiki, and all the good times. Thank you all! THIS is what I work for

Can the adult brain acquire typical representations after missing an essential early-life experience? New work with Marge Livingstone: “Early face deprivation leads to long-lasting deficits in cortical face processing”. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Curious how the face-processing system recovers when early face experience is missing? Come see me present new data on recovery and limits of plasticity at #SfN2025 @sfn.org on Tues, Nov 18 at 10:45 am (SDCC Rm 33)! www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/21171...

These findings suggest that the predictive power of LMss for human visual cortex responses is not due to the evolution or learning of language per se, but rather reflects the statistical structure of the visual world as captured by natural language www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 6/6

Monkey See, Model Knew: Large Language Models Accurately Predict Visual Brain Responses in Humans and Non-Human Primates

Recent progress in multimodal AI and language-aligned visual representation learning has rekindled debates about the role of language in shaping the human visual system. In particular, the emergent ab...

biorxiv.org

New preprint “Monkey See, Model Knew: LLMs accurately predict visual responses in humans AND NHPs” Led by Colin Conwell with @emaliemcmahon.bsky.social Akshay Jagadeesh, Kasper Vinken @amrahs-inolas.bsky.social @jacob-prince.bsky.social George Alvarez @taliakonkle.bsky.social & Marge Livingstone 1/n

Our new work is out in @NatureComms! rdcu.be/d0ea2. Face cells are pareidolia-selective, but this selectivity 1) is not explained by human ratings, 2) did not require a face-like configuration, but was 3) driven by local features 4) explained by features present in non-pareidolia nonface objects.

Face cells encode object parts more than facial configuration of illusory faces

Nature Communications - Macaque face cells respond to objects humans perceive as illusory faces, yet the specific features that drive these responses remain unclear. Here, the authors show face...

rdcu.be