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arXiv · 2605.30556

Supervised Training Rapidly Degrades Early Visual Cortex Alignment Across Biologically Plausible Learning Rules

Nils Leutenegger
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Abstract

CORRECTION (August 2026): the central finding of this paper is not supported. An evaluation-mode defect left the batch-normalisation layers of the predictive-coding and STDP conditions in training mode during feature extraction, producing their apparent preservation of V1 alignment. With the defect repaired, predictive coding degrades V1 alignment more than backpropagation does, not less. The finding that training degrades V1 alignment for every rule tested does survive. See the correction note on page 1; the original abstract below and the body are unchanged from v1. Corrected analysis: arXiv:2608.12408. Random, untrained neural networks consistently match or exceed trained networks in representational similarity to early visual cortex. This puzzling finding challenges the assumption that learning improves brain alignment. We investigate it by tracking representational similarity analysis (RSA) alignment to human fMRI data across training for four learning rules: backpropagation (BP), feedback alignment (FA), predictive coding (PC), and spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). Using 720 object images from the THINGS database and fMRI data from three subjects across six visual ROIs, we measure Spearman correlations between model and brain representational dissimilarity matrices at eight training checkpoints (epochs 0-40). We find that (1) a single epoch of training reduces V1 alignment by 25-90%, depending on the learning rule; (2) backpropagation reduces V1 alignment most severely (delta r = -0.080), while predictive coding and STDP preserve substantially more (delta r ~ -0.04); and (3) a weaker, opposite tendency appears in object-selective cortex (LOC), where BP shows the largest increase in alignment during training, although the absolute change is small.

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Nils Leutenegger. 2026-05-28. Supervised Training Rapidly Degrades Early Visual Cortex Alignment Across Biologically Plausible Learning Rules. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.30556

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