Mid-sagittal slice view of my brain acquired with a T1-weighted MPRAGE pulse sequence.
Spatial resolution = 1 cubic millimeter
Our data is acquired using a Siemans 1.5T scanner at UCSD.
(V1, V2, V3, V3A, & V4):
In these visual areas, neighboring neurons have nearby receptive fields creating 2-D maps of visual space on the cortical surface. To identify these maps, we measure brain activity while subjects view a slowly expanding ring and rotating wedge that map out visual space in eccentricity and angle. These stimuli cause a travelling wave of activity across the cortical maps that peaks within a particular voxel when the stimulus passes through its associated region of visual space. The stimuli are cycled so that the phase of the fMRI response (color coded) within each voxel reveals its retinotopic location. The data is best viewed when projected onto a computationally flattended rendition of the cortical surface, as shown here. The visual area borders are labeled with white lines.
Once identified on the flattened maps, the visual area coordinates are projected onto a 3-D volume. This figure shows a 3-D rendering of my brain with labeled visual areas. The bottom view (cerebellum removed) reveals the ventral surface of the brain and the symmetry across hemispheres