The human brain contains many neurons, the activity of which, when measured, respond differently to specific types of visual input. These neurons can be divided in retinotopic and category-specific regions and have been the focus of a large body of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research. Studying these regions requires accurate localization of their cortical location, hence researchers traditionally perform functional localizer scans to identify these regions in each individual.
However, it is not always possible to conduct these localizer scans. Researchers from NESTOR Project 1 have recently published a probabilistic map of the visual brain, detailing the functional location and variability of visual regions. This atlas can help identify the loci of visual areas in healthy subjects as well as populations (e.g., blind people, infants) in which functional localizers cannot be run.
A Probabilistic Functional Atlas of Human Occipito-Temporal Visual Cortex. Mona Rosenke, Rick van Hoof, Job van den Hurk, Kalanit Grill-Spector, Rainer Goebel. Cerebral Cortex, Volume 31, Issue 1, January 2021