A strong relationship between cortical folding and the location of primary sensory areas in the human brain is well established. However, it is unknown if coupling between functional responses and gross anatomy is found at higher stages of sensory processing. We examined the relationship between cortical folding and the location of the retinotopic maps hV4 and VO1, which are intermediate stages in the human ventral visual processing stream. Our data show a consistent arrangement of the eccentricity maps within hV4 and VO1 with respect to anatomy, with the consequence that the hV4/VO1 boundary is found consistently in the posterior transverse collateral sulcus (ptCoS) despite individual variability in map size and cortical folding. Understanding this relationship allowed us to predict the location of visual areas hV4 and VO1 in a separate set of individuals, using only their anatomies, with >85% accuracy. These findings have important implications for understanding the relation between cortical folding and functional maps as well as for defining visual areas from anatomical landmarks alone.
Keywords: cortical folding; functional neuroanatomy; retinotopy; ventral visual stream; visual cortex.
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