Studying infant vision in the scanner and in silico reveals the richness of early brain function

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 02 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-025-02198-5

Determining what infants recognize in the things they see has been difficult. Using brain imaging and deep neural networks, we found that in 2-month-old infants the visual system represented not only how things looked but also what category they belonged to. This showed that features sufficient for object recognition are already important in early life.