The bilateral Left Cerebrum.Occipital Lobe.Middle Occipital Gyrus.Gray Matter.Brodmann area 18 corresponds to a secondary visual cortical region (visual association cortex, V2) located in the middle portion of the occipital lobe, adjacent to primary visual cortex (Brodmann area 17). This area participates in early-stage processing and integration of visual information, including orientation, spatial frequency, and basic form and pattern analysis, and contributes to constructing more complex visual representations that are relayed to higher-order visual association areas. Neurons in Brodmann area 18 exhibit retinotopic organization and receive strong feedforward input from area 17 as well as reciprocal connections with other extrastriate visual regions. A closely related structure encompassing this region is Brodmann area 18.
The bilateral Left Cerebrum.Occipital Lobe.Middle Occipital Gyrus.Gray Matter.Brodmann area 18 (BA18), a core component of secondary visual cortex, has been implicated in multiple genetic and GWAS-based findings, though typically as part of broader occipital or visual-network measures rather than as an isolated region. Imaging-genetics and large consortia (e.g., ENIGMA, UK Biobank) have reported SNP-based heritability for occipital cortical thickness and surface area, with common variants in genes involved in neurodevelopment, axon guidance, and synaptic function (such as DLG2, NRXN1, and MAPK/ERK-pathway–related genes) associated with occipital morphology that includes BA18. Polygenic risk for schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, and major depressive disorder has been linked to structural and functional alterations in occipital regions, including reduced cortical thickness or altered activation in BA18, suggesting that visual-association cortex differences partly mediate genetic risk for these conditions. GWAS of visual perception and reading-related traits have identified associations near genes such as KIAA0319, DCDC2, and other neurodevelopmental loci, with downstream effects on occipito-temporal and occipital regions encompassing BA18, although the associations are usually reported at the network level rather than explicitly confined to this Talairach-defined area. Functional imaging-genetic studies have also related APOE and other Alzheimer’s disease risk variants to altered occipital activation and connectivity patterns, implicating BA18 in early visual-processing changes in neurodegeneration. Collectively, genetic associations for this region converge on pathways regulating cortical development, synaptic organization, and visual-system integrity, but current evidence is indirect and typically embedded in broader occipital or visual-network analyses rather than region-specific GWAS focused exclusively on BA18.
Overview generated by GPT-4o (2026).
Region ID: 306
Hemisphere: bilateral
Atlas: Talairach labels 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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