V1T: Large-Scale Mouse V1 Response Prediction Using a Vision Transformer

Abstract

Accurate predictive models of the visual cortex neural response to natural visual stimuli remain a challenge in computational neuroscience. In this work, we introduce $V{\small 1}T$, a novel Vision Transformer based architecture that learns a shared visual and behavioral representation across animals. We evaluate our model on two large datasets recorded from mouse primary visual cortex and outperform previous convolution-based models by more than 12.7% in prediction performance. Moreover, we show that the self-attention weights learned by the Transformer correlate with the population receptive fields. Our model thus sets a new benchmark for neural response prediction and can be used jointly with behavioral and neural recordings to reveal meaningful characteristic features of the visual cortex.