Atlas

A surface-based probabilistic atlas of the retinotopic visual areas

by Linda Henriksson

1 A surface-based probabilistic atlas of the retinotopic visual areas

Here we provide a probabilistic atlas of retinotopic visual areas which was constructed based on the object mapping data from 15 subjects. You need the Freesurfer software (version 5.0.0 or later) to visualize the functional probability atlas over the cortical surface of the Freesurfer's average subject called fsaverage. The main files in here are the annotation files, which contain the probabilities of the different visual areas in each vertex of the cortical surface for both hemispheres of the fsaverage subject, and the maximum probability maps, which visualize the maximum probability of any visual area in each vertex of the cortical surface. You can also download probability maps of single visual areas.

If you use our methods in your research, please cite the article:
Henriksson L, Karvonen J, Salminen-Vaparanta N, Railo H, and Vanni S. Retinotopic Maps, Spatial Tuning, and Locations of Human Visual Areas in Surface Coordinates Characterized with Multifocal and Blocked fMRI Designs. PLoS ONE, 7(5): e36859, 2012. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036859.

If you have questions or comments, please contact: Linda Henriksson

For help with the use of Freesurfer, see: FreeSurferWiki

Download the files

Download the files:

va_surface_atlas.tar.gz or va_surface_atlas.zip

(includes annotation files, maximum probability maps, group-average polar angle and eccentricity maps, probability maps of the visual areas)

Probabilistic atlas of visual areas

Load the annotation file

1. tksurfer fsaverage rh inflated

2. File -> Label -> Load Annotation

Select: rh.16areas_prob_min3_sm1.annot

The annotation file will take some time to load because of the large number of vertices, but eventually it should look like this:

The colormap visualizing the vertices in the annotation is not used for anything. But if the colormap is sparse (see Figure below), you need to update your Freesurfer to a newer version!