Cognitive Neuroscience and Deep Learning Group

  • Department of Cognitive Science
  • Johns Hopkins University
  • Baltimore, USA
Our goal is to understand neural computations in the visual cortex.

Welcome to the Bonner Lab at the Cognitive Science Department of Johns Hopkins University, led by Assistant Professor Mick Bonner. Our research focuses on the intersection of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and computational vision. We are dedicated to understanding how visual information is processed and represented in biological systems. Our approach combines neuroimaging and computational modeling to investigate the brain’s mechanisms for vision. We utilize advanced imaging techniques and deep learning models to explore the complex neural and computational underpinnings of visual perception.

Our goal is to uncover the core statistical principles governing visual representation in the brain. Our recent investigations have revealed that these representations are intrinsically high-dimensional and that new theoretical perspectives and methods are needed to understand the full complexity of human brain representations. These findings challenge traditional views of neural representations as low-dimensional objects, and they have inspired new directions of research into the computational and neural underpinnings of biological vision. Our ongoing work builds on these discoveries and seeks to push neuroscience research beyond the characterization of a handful of representational dimensions and toward a more comprehensive understanding of how the human brain operates in high dimensions.

Latest News

20 May 2026
Two talks and two posters presented by the Bonner Lab at this year’s VSS conference in St. Pete Beach, FL.
15 Apr 2026
Yash starts as a Research Intern at Microsoft Research in Redmond, USA, working on AI agents for science.
12 Mar 2026
Mick Bonner receives the prestigious Humboldt Research Fellowship for research in Germany.
18 Feb 2026
Yash received a $10,000 USD Google Gemini Research Grant to support computational cognitive science investigations.
15 Dec 2025
Kelsey’s paper on individual differences in visual experience accepted at Current Biology!
11 Dec 2025
Atlas’ Nature Machine Intelligence paper covered in The Baltimore Sun!
3 Nov 2025
Raj’s paper on High dimensional representations in the cortex accepted at PLOS comp bio!
7 Oct 2025
Atlas’ paper on Convolutional architectures are cortex-aligned de novo accepted at Nature Machine Intelligence!
20 May 2025
Ray’s paper on universal dimensions of vision accepted at Science Advances!
17 May 2025
Prof. Bonner presents ‘The AI Revolution in Visual Science’ talk at VSS conference.
15 May 2025
Yash begins research scientist internship at Sakana AI in Tokyo, focusing on AI for scientific discovery.
1 May 2025
Yingqi’s paper accepted as a full paper at CCN conference!
16 Apr 2025
Emalie awarded the prestigious Glushko Dissertation Prize 2024 from the Cognitive Science Society!
18 Sep 2024
Congratulations to Emalie on successfully defending her PhD dissertation!
7 May 2024
Prof. Bonner awarded IDIES Seed Funding Award from Hopkins.
3 Apr 2024
Prof. Bonner’s invited lecture at the Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute!
23 Jan 2024
Eric’s high latent dimensionality paper out in PLOS comp bio!
13 Nov 2023
Prof. Bonner at the Kavli Institute for Deep Learning from the Perspective of Physics and Neuroscience workshop
5 Oct 2023
Emalie’s social action features paper accepted at Current Biology!
1 Oct 2023
Welcome new PhD students, Yash, Ray, and Ananya!
23 Aug 2023
Bonner lab gives keynote talk and tutorial at CCN conference in Oxford, UK.
1 Aug 2023
Colin Conwell joins the lab as a PostDoc!
23 June 2023
Caterina and Eric’s paper on contextual prototypes accepted at Cognition!
9 May 2023
Prof. Bonner receives Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award!