Dr Maggie Mae Mell | Detailed functional neuroanatomy of ventral visual cortex

The ability to perceive and navigate the world around us is an integral component of the human experience. The ease with which we interact with visual objects and environments in daily life relies on complex processing throughout a large network of brain areas. Previous research of the human visual cortex has revealed functionally distinct processing pathways of hierarchically-organized areas. The ventral visual pathway, thought to be the key system involved in object recognition and object quality, begins in early visual cortex (V1, V2, and V3) and continues through V4 into inferior temporal cortex. The boundaries of early visual areas are defined by the presence of retinotopic maps, however retinotopic maps in higher visual areas are not generally agreed upon or have yet to be found. Visual areas within ventral visual cortex have also been functionally defined via a number of previous research studies, however most of this research relies on experiments aimed at defining one specific area with highly controlled stimuli. This limits the ability to generalize to real-world perception as well as our understanding of how these areas work together to generate a complete percept. Additionally, researchers disagree upon the functional specialization of areas, and for large portions of ventral visual cortex it is unknown what function they serve. Finally, relating functionally defined areas to corresponding regions with distinct anatomical features has proven challenging. In this project we aim to advance our understanding of the functional neuroanatomical organization of ventral visual cortex. To achieve this, we will densely sample individual brains, collecting high-resolution functional, structural, and diffusion data. Specifically, we will generate multi-modal feature maps that combine functional and structural data to reveal a more fine-grained cortical parcellation. Connective field modeling will extend the organizational principles of retinotopy beyond early visual areas and, combined with high-resolution diffusion tractography, identify connectivity profiles between neighboring regions within the parcellation. We expect the results of this project to provide a detailed and nuanced understanding of both the organizational structure and functional role of areas throughout ventral visual cortex.