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However, these representations are largely opaque: it is unclear what features of the language stimulus drive the response in each brain area. We present generative causal testing (GCT), a framework for generating concise explanations of language selectivity in the brain from predictive models and then testing those explanations in follow-up experiments using LLM-generated stimuli.This approach is successful at explaining selectivity both in individual voxels and cortical regions of interest (ROIs), including newly identified microROIs in prefrontal cortex. We show that explanatory accuracy is closely related to the predictive power and stability of the underlying predictive models. Finally, we show that GCT can dissect fine-grained differences between brain areas with similar functional selectivity. These results demonstrate that LLMs can be used to bridge the widening gap between data-driven models and formal scientific theories.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.00812v2","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.00812v2.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"a-generative-framework-to-bridge-data-driven","repo_url":"https://github.com/microsoft/automated-explanations","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"MIT"}}],"tasks":[],"methods":[{"method_slug":"gct","method_name":"GCT"}],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2410.00812","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2410.00812"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-24T18:15:14+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. 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