Does resting state functional connectivity reflect visual system architecture?

Does resting state functional connectivity reflect visual system architecture? M Scholvinck¹, E Genc², A Kohler³
¹Ernst Strungmann Institute for Neuroscience, Germany ²Faculty of Psychology, Biopsychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany ³Institute of Psychology, University of Münster, Germany Contact: marieke.scholvinck@esi-frankfurt.de
Spontaneous fMRI activity is spatiotemporally organized into functional networks; sets of brain regions that are co-activated during certain tasks and correlated during rest. The visual system exhibits a hierarchical and retinotopic organization. Does resting-state fMRI activity reflect this visual system architecture? We retinotopically mapped the visual system of 44 participants, and explored their resting-state activity in the context of known anatomical and functional connections. We specifically examined the correlations between areas along the visual hierarchy (LGN, V1, V2, V3, V4, and MT), and the correlations between different retinotopic subregions, i.e. regions encoding the foveal versus the peripheral part of the visual field. A strong factor influencing the strength of all correlations was distance. Interhemispheric correlations between homotopic areas were especially strong and exceeded correlations between LGN and cortex. In contrast, intrahemispheric correlations along the visual hierarchy were moderate, and within-area correlations between periphery- and fovea-encoding regions were particularly weak. Correlations in the dorsal processing stream seemed slightly stronger than correlations in the ventral processing stream. These correlation patterns were robust and only marginally altered under task conditions. Together, they imply that resting-state fMRI activity in the visual system follows both its hierarchical and retinotopic organization.

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