Population connective field modeling reveals proto-retinotopic visual cortex organization in the prenatal human brain.

Authors

So-Hyeon Yoo, Anne-Sophie Kieslinger, Michael A Skeide

Published in

Science advances. Volume 12. Issue 40. Pages eaee9300. Oct 02, 2026. Epub Sep 30, 2026.

Abstract

The visual space is sampled by cortical field maps in which nearby neuronal populations encode nearby locations of images received from the retina. Whether retinotopic cortical organization already emerges in the neonatal or even prenatal human brain is currently unknown. To answer this question in vivo, we applied population connective field modeling to 871 resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging datasets ranging from prenatal to young adult age. We found topographically organized eccentricity and polar angle connectivity maps in V2 and V3 of the visual cortex as early as the 21st week of gestation. These results highlight that human proto-retinotopic cortical maps develop in the second trimester of pregnancy, predating visual experience.

PMID:
42814805
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 01 Oct 2026.

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