Mesoscale functional organization of face and body areas in the macaque brain

Qi Zhu (), Xiaolian Li, Ivo D. Popivanov, Jonathan R. Polimeni, Rufin Vogels and Wim Vanduffel ()
Additional contact information
Qi Zhu: Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin Center
Xiaolian Li: KU Leuven Medical School
Ivo D. Popivanov: KU Leuven Medical School
Jonathan R. Polimeni: Massachusetts General Hospital
Rufin Vogels: KU Leuven Medical School
Wim Vanduffel: KU Leuven Medical School

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Abstract Segregated networks of mesoscale functional units convey highly specific functional signals within and across early visual areas. However, it remains unclear whether higher-order category-selective areas exhibit a similar mesoscale functional organization. In this study, we investigated the mesoscale functional architecture of face-, body-, and object-selective regions in macaque monkeys using sub-millimeter fMRI (0.22 mm3 voxels) combined with single-cell recordings. Our findings reveal that these category-selective areas are subdivided into spatially clustered mesoscale functional units, which are highly consistent across subjects. Notably, mesoscale functional units of the same type exhibit segregated interhemispheric functional connectivity, forming long-range mesoscale functional networks. Single-cell recordings from a body-selective area confirmed this mesoscale organization and showed a remarkable correspondence between fMRI-defined mesoscale functional units and neuronal tuning profiles. These mesoscale functional units also displayed sharp functional boundaries and response similarity decay patterns, similar to those observed in previous single-unit recordings. Our findings suggest that mesoscale functional networks are a fundamental feature of primate cortex and highlight the power of high-resolution, high-sensitive fMRI in mapping neural circuitry at mesoscale level.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63962-6 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-63962-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-63962-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().