Targeted perturbations reveal brain-like local coding axes in robustified, but not standard, ANN-based brain models

Abstract: Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have become the de facto standard for modeling the human visual system, primarily due to their success in predicting neural responses. However, with many models now achieving similar predictive accuracy, we need a stronger criterion. Here, we use small-scale adversarial probes to characterize the local representational geometry of many highly predictive ANN-based brain models. We report four key findings. First, we show that most contemporary ANN-based brain models are unexpectedly fragile. Despite high prediction scores, their response predictions are highly sensitive to small, imperceptible perturbations, revealing unreliable local coding directions. Second, we demonstrate that a model's sensitivity to adversarial probes can better discriminate between candidate neural encoding models than prediction accuracy alone. Third, we find that standard models rely on distinct local coding directions that do not transfer across model architectures. Finally, we show that adversarial probes from robustified models produce generalizable and semantically meaningful changes, suggesting that they capture the local coding dimensions of the visual system. Together, our work shows that local representational geometry provides a stronger criterion for brain model evaluation. We also provide empirical grounds for favoring robust models, whose more stable coding axes not only align better with neural selectivity but also generate concrete, testable predictions for future experiments.