The bilateral Temporal Fusiform Cortex, anterior division, as defined in the Harvard–Oxford cortical structural atlas, comprises the anterior portion of the fusiform gyrus within the temporal lobe, extending along the ventral surface between the inferior temporal gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus. This region is implicated in high-level visual processing, including aspects of object and face recognition, and contributes to the integration of visual information with semantic and memory-related processes. Its cytoarchitecture and connectivity position it within the ventral visual stream, linking occipital visual areas with temporal and limbic structures involved in recognition and meaning. There is no direct Wikipedia article for this specific atlas-defined region; a closely related structure is the fusiform gyrus: Fusiform gyrus.
The bilateral anterior division of the Temporal Fusiform Cortex (as defined in the Harvard-Oxford cortical atlas) has been implicated in several genetic and imaging-genetics studies, particularly through GWAS of cortical structure and function. Variants in genes involved in synaptic development and plasticity (such as BDNF, CACNA1C, and GRIN2B) have been associated with fusiform and adjacent temporal cortical thickness, surface area, and activation, often in the context of face processing and social cognition. Large-scale GWAS of brain MRI measures (e.g., ENIGMA and UK Biobank) have reported loci influencing temporal and fusiform morphology that overlap with risk variants for neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions, including autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, and major depressive disorder, where the fusiform gyrus shows altered structure or connectivity. Imaging-genetic work has linked ASD-related genes (e.g., CNTNAP2, SHANK3) and polygenic risk scores for autism and social communication traits to functional differences in fusiform regions engaged in face recognition and emotion processing. Additional associations connect fusiform and temporal cortex measures to genetic risk for language and reading disorders, prosopagnosia-like face recognition deficits, and broader cognitive traits, although these findings are often regionally coarse and not always specific to the anterior division of the Temporal Fusiform Cortex in the atlas.
Overview generated by GPT-4o (2026).
Region ID: 37
Hemisphere: bilateral
Atlas: HarvardOxford cort maxprob thr25 1mm
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Full Quality Version: Download MP4
Wali Sidiqyar*, Gaurav Rudravaram*, Elyssa M. McMaster, Trent M. Schwartz, Adam M. Saunders, Kurt G. Schilling, Bennett A. Landman "Introducing SPINS: A Shared Public Visualization Library of Neuroanatomical Structures." Medical Imaging with Deep Learning- short paper
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