Abstract

Surface-based approaches to spatial localization and registration in primate cerebral cortex

David van Essen
Washington University
Neurobiology

Explicit surface reconstructions provide invaluable substrates for visualizing and analyzing the complex convolutions of cerebral
cortex. This report illustrates the utility of surface-based atlases of human and macaque monkey for representing many aspects of cortical organization and function. These include a variety of cortical partitioning schemes plus an open-ended collection of complex activation patterns obtained from fMRI studies.
Surface-based registration from one hemisphere to another provides powerful approach to (i) objectively and quantitatively representing both the consistencies and the variability of the
pattern of convolutions and the patterns of functional activation from any given task; and (ii) making comparisons across species and evaluating candidate homologies between cortical areas or functionally delineated regions.