# Can the early human visual system compete with Deep Neural Networks?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.04744 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.04744/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 12 Oct 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [A Systematic Review of Robustness in Deep Learning for Computer Vision: Mind the gap?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00639/) (2021)
- [Machine Learning Robustness: A Primer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00897/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We study and compare the human visual system and state-of-the-art deep neural networks on classification of distorted images. Different from previous works, we limit the display time to 100ms to test only the early mechanisms of the human visual system, without allowing time for any eye movements or other higher level processes. Our findings show that the human visual system still outperforms modern deep neural networks under blurry and noisy images. These findings motivate future research into developing more robust deep networks.