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Updated: Jul 9, 2026

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) of the Visual Cortex with Wide-View Retinotopic Stimulation
Published on: December 8, 2023
Nature versus nurture in ventral visual cortex: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study of twins
Thad A Polk1, Joonkoo Park, Mason R Smith
1Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA. tpolk@umich.edu
Abstract:
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we estimated neural activity in twins to study genetic influences on the cortical response to categories of visual stimuli (faces, places, and pseudowords) that are known to elicit distinct patterns of activity in ventral visual cortex. The neural activity patterns in monozygotic twins were significantly more similar than in dizygotic twins for the face and place stimuli, but there was no effect of zygosity for pseudowords (or chairs, a control category). These results demonstrate that genetics play a significant role in determining the cortical response to faces and places, but play a significantly smaller role (if any) in the response to orthographic stimuli.
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