Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) trained on object recognition achieve high task performance but continue to exhibit vulnerability under a range of visual perturbations and out-of-domain images, when compared with biological vision. Prior work has demonstrated that coupling a standard CNN with a front-end (VOneBlock) that mimics the primate primary visual cortex (V1) can improve overall model robustness. Expanding on this, we introduce Early Vision Networks (EVNets), a new class of hybrid CNNs that combine the VOneBlock with a novel SubcorticalBlock, whose architecture draws from computational models in neuroscience and is parameterized to maximize alignment with subcortical responses reported across multiple experimental studies. Without being optimized to do so, the assembly of the SubcorticalBlock with the VOneBlock improved V1 alignment across most standard V1 benchmarks, and better modeled extra-classical receptive field phenomena. In addition, EVNets exhibit stronger emergent shape bias and outperform the base CNN architecture by 9.3\% on an aggregate benchmark of robustness evaluations, including adversarial perturbations, common corruptions, and domain shifts. Finally, we show that EVNets can be further improved when paired with a state-of-the-art data augmentation technique, surpassing the performance of the isolated data augmentation approach by 6.2\% on our robustness benchmark. This result reveals complementary benefits between changes in architecture to better mimic biology and training-based machine learning approaches.

Characterizing interactions between brain areas is a fundamental goal of systems neuroscience. While such analyses are possible when areas are recorded simultaneously, it is rare to observe all combinations of areas of interest within a single animal or recording session. How can we leverage multi-animal datasets to better understand multi-area interactions? Building on recent progress in large-scale, multi-animal models, we introduce NeuroPaint, a masked autoencoding approach for inferring the dynamics of unobserved brain areas. By training across animals with overlapping subsets of recorded areas, NeuroPaint learns to reconstruct activity in missing areas based on shared structure across individuals. We train and evaluate our approach on both synthetic data and two multi-animal, multi-area Neuropixels datasets. Our results demonstrate that models trained across animals with partial observations can successfully in-paint the dynamics of unrecorded areas, enabling multi-area analyses that transcend the limitations of any single experiment.

Vision Language Models (VLMs) excel at complex visual tasks such as VQA and chart understanding, yet recent work suggests they struggle with simple perceptual tests. We present an evaluation that tests vision-language models' capacity for non-local visual reasoning-- reasoning that requires chaining evidence collected from multiple, possibly distant, regions of an image. We isolate three distinct forms of non local vision: comparative perception, which demands holding two images in working memory and comparing them; saccadic search, which requires making discrete, evidence driven jumps to locate successive targets; and smooth visual search, which involves searching smoothly along a continuous contour. Flagship models (e.g., GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Claude Sonnet 4), even those that perform well on prior primitive vision benchmarks, fail these tests and barely exceed random accuracy on two variants of our tasks that are trivial for humans. Our structured evaluation suite allows us to test if VLMs can perform similar visual algorithms to humans. Our findings show that despite gains in raw visual acuity, current models lack core visual reasoning capabilities.

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Donald Trump's White House UFC Event Would Be Embarrassing Anywhere A Monster Energy-sponsored MMA show on the White House's South Lawn was never going to be the height of dignity. But UFC Freedom 250 is failing to clear even the lowest bar. With his history of involvement in pro wrestling and boxing and his zeal for garish excess--the man is a failed casino impresario, after all--it makes perfect sense that Donald Trump would want to celebrate both America's birthday and his own with UFC cage fights on the White House lawn, sponsored by Monster Energy. If there's been any surprise, it's been in how the whole affair has so far failed to clear the lowest bar. The event's promoters are certainly setting expectations high.

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More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Raccoons are increasingly encroaching on populated areas, posing health risks for humans. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy . Raccoons are cute and curious creatures, but frequently carry infectious diseases .

Chinese Drivers Are Using Tiny Plastic Heads to Fool Tesla's Autopilot Safeguards A cottage industry of celebrity figurines, blinking screens, and other DIY gadgets is helping drivers bypass Tesla's distracted-driving controls. In China, for just $30, you can have Dwayne Johnson drive your Tesla for you. Sounds too cheap to be true? What you're actually buying is a tiny replica of The Rock's head, designed to sit above the rearview mirror and trick Tesla into thinking an attentive driver is behind the wheel. Tesla's self-driving system appears unable to tell the difference between the figurines and a real person, allowing the actual driver to look away from the road, scroll through their phone, or even doze off--activities that are supposed to be prohibited while assisted-driving features are engaged.

SpaceX's stock market debut has thrust the richest man in the universe into an unexplored frontier of wealth. There are thousands of billionaires across the world. But there is only one trillionaire. Elon Musk became the first person to amass a personal fortune of over $1,000,000,000,000--that's 12 zeros--after shares of his rocket company SpaceX debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday. SpaceX's initial public offering on Thursday valued the company at nearly $1.8 trillion, up from its most recent private valuation of around $1.25 trillion.

GOP lawmakers, tech investors, and even OpenAI have tied the anti-data-center movement in the US to Chinese interference. Experts say it's much more complicated than that. Right-wing officials and data center investors are increasingly claiming that data center protests are being funded and influenced by the Chinese government. OpenAI added to the discourse on Wednesday when it released a report describing a cluster of accounts originating in China that, the company said, had been spreading anti-data-center messages on social media. Experts who spoke to WIRED, however, are skeptical of the funding claims.