VCNet: Recreating High-Level Visual Cortex Principles for Robust Artificial Vision

Abstract: Despite their success in image classification, modern convolutional neural networks (CNNs) exhibit fundamental limitations, including data inefficiency, poor out-of-distribution generalization, and vulnerability to adversarial perturbations. The primate visual system, in contrast, demonstrates superior efficiency and robustness, suggesting that its architectural principles may offer a blueprint for more capable artificial vision systems. This paper introduces Visual Cortex Network (VCNet), a novel neural network architecture whose design is informed by the macro-scale organization of the primate visual cortex. VCNet emulates key biological mechanisms, including hierarchical processing across distinct cortical areas, dual-stream information segregation, and top-down predictive feedback. We evaluate VCNet on two specialized benchmarks: the Spots-10 animal pattern dataset and a light field image classification task. Our results show that VCNet achieves a classification accuracy of 92.1\% on Spots-10 and 74.4\% on the light field dataset, surpassing contemporary models of comparable size. This work demonstrates that integrating neuroscientific principles into network design can lead to more efficient and robust models, providing a promising direction for addressing long-standing challenges in machine learning.