{"doi":"10.1167/jov.25.8.9","title":"Computational evidence for an inverse relationship between retinal and brain complexity","abstract":"Visual neuroscientists have long observed an inverse relationship between brain and retinal complexity: As brain complexity increases across species, retinas adapt to simpler visual processing. Lindsey et al. previously provided a computational explanation for this pattern, showing that shallow networks encode complex features in their first stage of processing, whereas deep networks encode simpler features. Here, these findings are extended to a suite of representational analyses and show that shallow networks generate high-dimensional representations with linear decision boundaries and specific visual features that can feed directly into behavioral responses. In contrast, deep networks generate low-dimensional representations with nonlinear decision boundaries and general visual features. These representations require further processing before they can produce the appropriate behavioral response. In summary, the findings extend a longstanding principle linking simpler retinal features to complex brains and offer a computational framework for understanding neural network behavior more generally.","journal":"Journal of Vision","year":2025,"id":545196,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9494,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1436042,"name":"Mitchell B. Slapik","orcid":"0000-0002-5478-4969","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":33,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:53:23.001995Z","pmid":"40622218","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}