Universal scale-free representations in human visual cortex.

ABSTRACT: How does the human brain encode complex visual information? While previous research has characterized individual dimensions of visual representation in cortex, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of how visual information is organized across the full range of neural population activity. Here, analyzing fMRI responses to natural scenes across multiple individuals, we discover that neural representations in human visual cortex follow a remarkably consistent scale-free organization-their variance decay is consistent with a power-law distribution, detected across four orders of magnitude of latent dimensions. This scale-free structure appears consistently across multiple visual regions and across individuals, suggesting it reflects a fundamental organizing principle of visual processin

SUBMITTER: Gauthaman RM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12654933 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature