Connectivity reveals homology between the visual systems of the human and macaque brains

Abstract

The visual systems of humans and nonhuman primates share many similarities in both anatomical and functional organization. Understanding the homology and differences between the two systems can provide important insights into the neural basis of visual perception and cognition. This research aims to investigate the homology between human and macaque visual systems based on connectivity, using diffusion tensor imaging and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to construct structural and functional connectivity fingerprints of the visual systems in humans and macaques, and quantitatively analyze the connectivity patterns. By integrating multimodal magnetic resonance imaging, this research explored the homology and differences between the two systems. The results showed that 9 brain regions in the macaque visual system formed highly homologous mapping relationships with 11 brain regions in the human visual system, and the related brain regions between the two species showed highly structure homologous, with their functional organization being essentially conserved across species. Finally, this research generated a homology information map of the visual system for humans and macaques, providing a new perspective for subsequent cross-species analysis.

Multi-scale hierarchical brain regions detect individual and inter-species variations of structural connectivity in macaque monkeys and humans

“…Previous study reveals the inter-species variation of the SC within the visual systems at ROI-level 17 , but there is no study to investigate the variation in whole brain. The variation of SC possibly depends on the size of ROI and, therefore, SC variations with various size of ROIs should be compared.…”