Il giorno venerdì 10 giugno 2022 dalle ore 11:30 alle ore 12:30 presso l’aula 3 il Prof. Edmund T. Rolls (Oxford Centre for Computational Neuroscience AND University of Warwick, UK) terrà il seminario dal titolo:
"The connectivity of human visual and parietal cortical regions, with implications for function”.
info: valentina.sulpizio@uniroma1.it
-------------------------------------------------
ABSTRACT
Multiple visual streams have now been identified in the human brain, using effective (i.e. directed, causal)
connectivity estimated from resting state fMRI. The effective connectivity was measured between 55 visual
cortical regions and 360 cortical regions in Human Connectome Project participants using the HCP-
Multimodal Parcellation atlas and complemented with functional connectivity and diffusion tractography.
A Ventrolateral Visual ‘What’ Stream for object and face recognition projects hierarchically to the inferior
temporal visual cortex which projects to the orbitofrontal cortex for reward value and emotion, and to the
hippocampal memory system. A Ventromedial Visual ‘Where’ Stream for scene representation connects to
the parahippocampal gyrus and hippocampus. An Inferior STS (superior temporal sulcus) cortex
Semantic Stream receives from the Ventrolateral Visual Stream, from visual inferior parietal PGi, and from
the ventromedial-prefrontal reward system and connects to language systems. A Dorsal Visual Stream
connects via V2 and V3A to MT+ Complex regions (including MT and MST), which connect to intraparietal
regions (including LIP, VIP and MIP) involved in visual motion and actions in space. It performs coordinate
transforms for idiothetic update of Ventromedial Stream scene representations. A Superior STS cortex
Semantic Stream receives visual inputs from the Inferior STS Visual Stream, PGi, and STV, and auditory
inputs from A5, is activated by face expression, motion and vocalization and is important in social behavior,
and connects to language systems.
The connectivity of the parietal cortex has also been analyzed. Intraparietal areas LIP, VIP, MIP, and AIP
have connectivity from early cortical visual regions, and to visuomotor regions such as the frontal eye fields,
consistent with functions in eye saccades and tracking. Five superior parietal area 7 regions receive from
similar areas and from the intraparietal areas, but also receive somatosensory inputs and project to premotor
areas including area 6, consistent with functions in performing actions to reach for, grasp, and manipulate
objects. In the anterior inferior parietal cortex, PFop, PFt and PFcm are mainly somatosensory, and PF in
addition receives visuo-motor and visual object information and is implicated in multimodal shape and body
image representations. In the posterior inferior parietal cortex, PFm and PGs combine visuo-motor, visual
object, and reward input and connect with the hippocampal system. PGi in addition provides a route
to motion-related superior temporal sulcus regions involved in social interactions. PGp has connectivity with
intraparietal regions involved in coordinate transforms and may be involved in idiothetic update
of hippocampal visual spatial representations.
These new findings help to advance our understanding of brain computational systems (Rolls, E.T. 2021
Brain Computations: What and How. Oxford University Press).
Background papers are available at www.oxcns.org
BIO-SKETCH
Edmund T. Rolls is a neuroscientist with research interests in computational neuroscience, emotion,
memory, vision, taste, olfaction, and mental disorders. He is a Professor at the University of Warwick, UK.
Professor Rolls has published more than 650 full length research papers on these topics, which are shown,
with many .pdfs available including some of his books, at https://www.oxcns.org.
His books include:
Rolls, E. T. (2021) Brain Computations: What and How. Oxford University Press: Oxford
Rolls, E. T. (2019) The Orbitofrontal Cortex. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Rolls, E. T. (2018) The Brain, Emotion, and Depression. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Rolls, E.T. (2016) Cerebral Cortex: Principles of Operation. Oxford University Press: Oxford.