Heritable functional architecture in human visual cortex

Abstract

How much of our visual processing, and thus our visual perception, is inherited? Variations in perceptual judgments of the size of visual objects have been found to correlate with idiosyncratic differences in the spatial sensitivity of primary visual cortex. Here we tested their heritability using retinotopic mapping and psychophysical experiments on size perception. The spatial sensitivity of human visual cortex, quantified by population receptive field analysis, was more similar in monozygotic (MZ) than dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs, especially in extrastriate regions, suggesting a partial genetic determination. Furthermore, inter-individual differences in perceptual bias for size judgments -how large or small stimuli appear to an observer -showed considerable heritability. This contrasts with previously reported idiosyncrasies across visual field quadrants, which showed little evidence of heritability. Our findings are therefore consistent with heritability of broad, eccentricity-dependent properties of visual function and cortical architecture, while quadrant-specific idiosyncrasies appear to lack a genetic basis.

Cortical magnification in human visual cortex parallels task performance around the visual field

“…Previous work examining the visual cortex in the context of twins and heritability has found some evidence of genetic control. The variance of resting-state fluctuations within the visual cortex has a strong genetic component (65), and the surface areas of V1, V2, and V3 are more correlated for monozygotic than dizygotic twins (30,66). Interestingly, our analysis of the asymmetries of twin-pairs in the dataset demonstrated differences between HVA and VMA.…”

Cortical Magnification in Human Visual Cortex Parallels Task Performance around the Visual Field

“…Previous work examining the visual cortex in the context of twins and heritability has found some evidence of genetic control. The variance of resting-state fluctuations within the visual cortex has a strong genetic component (65), and the surface areas of V1, V2, and V3 are more correlated for monozygotic than dizygotic twins (30,66).…”

The role of visual experience in brain inter-individual variability

“…Despite the clear importance of inter-individual variability in determining brain development and (dys)function, the origins of neural variability remain unclear. Heritability has been shown to account for a high percentage of brain functional connectivity network organization (Ge et al, 2017;Reineberg et al, 2019;Yang et al, 2016) and brain functional activation (Alvarez et al, 2021;Park et al, 2012a;Park et al, 2012b;Polk et al, 2007), but does not explain the full range. One large source of variability, the effects of environmental factors such as sensory experience, remains particularly unclear.…”