树鼩视觉形式处理的压缩层次结构，这一成果由美国加州大学Doris Y. Tsao研究团队经过不懈努力而取得。相关论文于2025年8月27日发表于国际顶尖学术期刊《自然》杂志上。

在这里，研究组研究了与灵长类最近的近亲之一树鼩的大规模视觉功能组织。在对清醒的树鼩进行大量视觉刺激的同时，该团队在树鼩腹侧视觉系统的许多皮质和丘脑区域进行了神经像素记录。研究小组发现，与光谱匹配的噪声相比，树鼩对自然纹理的接受野大小、反应延迟和选择性都增加了沿视觉路径向前移动，这与灵长类动物的等级组织相一致。

然而，树鼩区域V2已经包含了复杂物体的高级表示。首先，V2编码了一个高级对象空间的完整表示。第二，V2活动支持最准确的目标解码和重建在所有树鼩视觉区域。事实上，树鼩V2的物体解码精度与猕猴后IT相当，并且大大高于猕猴V2。最后，从V2开始，课题组发现了与猕猴颞下皮层相似的具有强烈面部选择性的细胞。总的来说，这些发现表明，灵长类动物视觉形式处理的核心计算原理是如何被保存下来的，但在一个小而高视觉的哺乳动物中却被分层压缩了。树鼩在其视觉通路和物体解码精度上显示出类似于灵长类动物的等级组织，以及强烈的面部选择细胞，这表明灵长类动物视觉形式处理的核心计算原理是如何保守但被压缩的。

研究人员表示，他们关于控制视觉的大脑过程的知识主要来自对灵长类动物的研究，灵长类动物的分层组织的视觉系统启发了深度神经网络的结构。这就提出了关于这种等级结构的普遍性的问题。

附：英文原文

Title: A compressed hierarchy for visual form processing in the tree shrew

Author: Lanfranchi, Frank F., Wekselblatt, Joseph, Wagenaar, Daniel A., Tsao, Doris Y.

Issue&Volume: 2025-08-27

Abstract: Our knowledge of the brain processes that govern vision is largely derived from studying primates, whose hierarchically organized visual system1 inspired the architecture of deep neural networks2. This raises questions about the universality of such hierarchical structures. Here we examined the large-scale functional organization for vision in one of the closest living relatives to primates, the tree shrew. We performed Neuropixels recordings3,4 across many cortical and thalamic areas spanning the tree shrew ventral visual system while presenting a large battery of visual stimuli in awake tree shrews. We found that receptive field size, response latency and selectivity for naturalistic textures, compared with spectrally matched noise5, all increased moving anteriorly along the tree shrew visual pathway, consistent with a primate-like hierarchical organization6,7. However, tree shrew area V2 already harboured a high-level representation of complex objects. First, V2 encoded a complete representation of a high-level object space8. Second, V2 activity supported the most accurate object decoding and reconstruction among all tree shrew visual areas. In fact, object decoding accuracy from tree shrew V2 was comparable to that in macaque posterior IT and substantially higher than that in macaque V2. Finally, starting in V2, we found strongly face-selective cells resembling those reported in macaque inferotemporal cortex9. Overall, these findings show how core computational principles of visual form processing found in primates are conserved, yet hierarchically compressed, in a small but highly visual mammal. Tree shrews show a primate-like hierarchical organization in their visual pathway and object decoding accuracy, along with strongly face-selective cells, demonstrating how core computational principles of visual form processing found in primates are conserved yet compressed.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09441-w

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09441-w