Colloquia/Seminars
Time: 3:00pm, Sep 2, 2024
Venue: Lecture Hall, Shanghai Brain Center
Speaker: Prof. Anna Wang Roe
Director, Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience & Technology,
School of Medicine, Zhejiang University
Biography:
Anna Wang Roe (B.A. Harvard University 1984, Ph.D. MIT 1991) is Director of the Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. As a Sloan, Packard, SPIE, and AAAS Fellow, she is known for her studies in visual and somatosensory processing in primate cerebral cortex and for development of optical and MRI neurotechnologies. She is currently working on the organization and function of foveolar visual cortex and developing a column-based optical vision cortical prosthetic.
Abstract:
A common tenet of neural sensory representation is that species-specific behaviors are reflected in specialized brain organizations1. In humans and nonhuman primates, the central one degree of vision is processed by the foveola2, a retinal structure which comprises a high density of photoreceptors and is crucial for primate-specific high acuity vision, color vision, and gaze-directed visual attention. In this study, we have developed high spatial resolution ultrahigh field 7T fMRI methods for functional mapping of foveolar visual cortex in awake monkeys. We provide evidence that, in the ventral pathway (V1-V4 and TEO), viewing of a central small spot elicits a ring of multiple (at least 8) foveolar representations per hemisphere. This ring surrounds a large area called the ‘foveolar core’. This is an area populated by millimeter-scale functional domains sensitive to fine stimuli and high spatial frequencies, consistent with foveolar visual acuity, as well as color and achromatic information, and motion. The unique position of the foveolar core suggests it may be a hub subserving higher order needs of foveolar function. Thus, this elaborate re-representation of central vision signifies a cortical specialization for various foveation behaviors.