Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Maps of human visual cortex have become crowded with functionally-defined regions of interest (ROIs) Many of these neuroimaging ROIs overlap, in part because research groups studying different aspects of vision assign different names to similar brain regions. We applied a novel atlas-based meta-analysis to the problem of localizing published activation coordinates to cortical surface anatomy. This permitted us to quantify the distinctions and commonalities among visual ROIs from diverse lines of research (retinotopy, category specificity and control of action). METHODS: The MatLab toolbox VAMCA (Visualization And Meta-analysis on Cortical Anatomy) provides surface-based localization of cortical functional activations published as stereotaxic coordinates (nitrc.org/projects/vamca). VAMCA uses a database of cortices from 60 healthy subjects to locate activations on a standardized cortical surface by extending the technique of multi-fiducial mapping. Non-parametric statistical tests are provided for determining the extent of overlap of the two groups’ foci. Here we used 55,000+ systematically collected coordinates from 6 journals in the SumsDB database (sumsdb.wustl.edu/sums) as well as ROI localizer coordinates from other articles to verify how accurately a wide gamut of anatomically-labelled functional contrasts are mapped to cortex. RESULTS: Most pairs of ventral cortex ROIs were reliably distinct from each other, including FFA and the visual word form area (VWFA). However, we did find significant separation between house- vs. scene-defined versions of the parahippocampal place area (PPA). Among dorsal ROIs, we identified several cases in which ROIs from different lines of research were likely to represent the same functional region; for example the human homologs of macaque LIP, DIPSM and the saccade-defined IPS3 region. CONCLUSION: We illustrate the position of over 20 functional ROIs and the statistical reliability of their locations on the cortical surface. We hope that this meta-analysis will clarify understanding of the functional organization of human visual cortex anatomy.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2012