Preferred spatial frequency covaries with cortical magnification in human primary visual cortex

Abstract

Primary visual cortex (V1) has long served as a model system for understanding cortical organization. Although its structural and functional properties vary markedly across its surface, patterns of covariation suggest possible underlying constancies. Such constancies would imply that V1 is composed of multiple identical units whose visual properties differ only due to differences in their inputs. To test this, we used fMRI to investigate how V1 cortical magnification and preferred spatial frequency covary with eccentricity and polar angle, measured in 40 observers. V1 cortical magnification and preferred spatial frequency were strongly correlated across eccentricity and around polar angle, however their relation differed between these dimensions: they were proportional across eccentricity but not polar angle. The constant ratio of cortical magnification to preferred spatial frequency when measured as a function of eccentricity suggests a shared underlying cause of variation in the two properties, e.g., the gradient of retinal ganglion cell density across eccentricity. In contrast, the deviation from proportionality around polar angle implies that cortical variation differs from that in retina along this dimension. Thus, a constancy hypothesis is supported for one of the two spatial dimensions of V1, highlighting the importance of examining the full 2D-map to understand how V1 is organized. AUTHOR SUMMARYHuman primary visual cortex (V1) is the first region of the brain to receive visual input. Its organization, whether built from uniform repeating units or following more complex patterns, remains debated. We assessed this by measuring two key V1 properties: cortical magnification (how much cortex processes each region of the visual field) and preferred spatial frequency (the level of detail neurons respond best to). Using MRI, we found these properties are closely linked, but their relation differs by visual field dimension. Across eccentricity (distance from the center of gaze), the two properties decrease at a fixed ratio, reflecting structural patterns in the retina. Around polar angle (circular dimension), this proportionality no longer holds, even though the two properties still covary. These results show that whereas V1 is partly governed by a simple rule of proportionality, its organization cannot be explained as just repeating units. Instead, different spatial dimensions follow different principles, emphasizing the need to consider the full two-dimensional layout of the visual map to understand how vision is represented in the brain.