Population connective field modeling reveals proto-retinotopic visual cortex organization in the prenatal human brain
- 1Research Group Learning in Early Childhood, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, 04103, Leipzig, Germany.
- 2Institute for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, 24105, Kiel, Germany.
Abstract
The visual space is sampled by cortical field maps in which nearby neuronal populations encode nearby locations of images received from the retina. Whether retinotopic cortical organization already emerges in the neonatal or even prenatal human brain is currently unknown. To answer this question in vivo, we applied population connective field modeling to 871 resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging datasets ranging from prenatal to young adult age. We found topographically organized eccentricity and polar angle connectivity maps in V2 and V3 of the visual cortex as early as the 21st week of gestation. These results highlight that human proto-retinotopic cortical maps develop in the second trimester of pregnancy, predating visual experience.
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BibTeX
@article{yoo2026population,
title = {{Population connective field modeling reveals proto-retinotopic visual cortex organization in the prenatal human brain}},
author = {So-Hyeon Yoo and Anne-Sophie Kieslinger and Michael A. Skeide},
journal = {Science Advances},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1126/sciadv.aee9300},
url = {https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aee9300},
note = {CC BY-NC},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Population connective field modeling reveals proto-retinotopic visual cortex organization in the prenatal human brain
AU - So-Hyeon Yoo
AU - Anne-Sophie Kieslinger
AU - Michael A. Skeide
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/02
JO - Science Advances
DO - 10.1126/sciadv.aee9300
UR - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aee9300
AB - The visual space is sampled by cortical field maps in which nearby neuronal populations encode nearby locations of images received from the retina. Whether retinotopic cortical organization already emerges in the neonatal or even prenatal human brain is currently unknown. To answer this question in vivo, we applied population connective field modeling to 871 resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging datasets ranging from prenatal to young adult age. We found topographically organized eccentricity and polar angle connectivity maps in V2 and V3 of the visual cortex as early as the 21st week of gestation. These results highlight that human proto-retinotopic cortical maps develop in the second trimester of pregnancy, predating visual experience.
SN - 2375-2548
ER -