The bilateral Right Cerebrum.Temporal Lobe.Fusiform Gyrus.Gray Matter.Brodmann area 37 corresponds to a cytoarchitectonic region in the ventral temporal cortex implicated in high-level visual processing, particularly the recognition and categorization of complex stimuli such as faces, objects, and written words. Brodmann area 37 lies within the posterior fusiform and adjacent inferior temporal cortex and is a key component of the ventral visual stream (“what” pathway), integrating detailed perceptual information with stored semantic knowledge to support visual object recognition and language-related functions like reading. Functionally, activity in this region has been associated with face and body part perception, visual word form processing, and the retrieval of semantic information linked to visual stimuli, and it maintains dense connections with occipital visual areas, other temporal lobe association cortices, and language-related regions in the dominant hemisphere. There is no direct Wikipedia article for “Brodmann area 37” as a stand-alone page; a closely related structure is the Fusiform gyrus.
The bilateral right fusiform gyrus (gray matter, Brodmann area 37) has been repeatedly implicated in genetic studies of face perception, reading, and higher-order visual processing. Twin and heritability studies show strong genetic influences on fusiform volume and functional activity, with candidate-gene and GWAS work implicating variants in genes involved in neurodevelopment and synaptic plasticity, such as BDNF, NRG1, CNTNAP2, and KIAA0319, in shaping fusiform structure and its role in visual word and face-form processing. Risk variants for autism spectrum disorder (e.g., in SHANK3, NRXN1 and other synaptic genes) and prosopagnosia have been associated with altered fusiform gyrus morphology and hypoactivation in face-related tasks, while dyslexia-associated loci (including DCDC2 and KIAA0319 regions) have been linked to atypical activation in fusiform “visual word form” territory. Large-scale psychiatric GWAS (for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression) and imaging-genetics meta-analyses (e.g., ENIGMA) have identified polygenic effects on temporal and fusiform cortical thickness and surface area, although no single locus is uniquely specific to this BA37 subregion. Additionally, common Alzheimer’s disease risk variants (such as APOE ε4) and other neurodegeneration-related loci have been associated with fusiform and temporal cortical atrophy, and GWAS of brain imaging phenotypes (e.g., UK Biobank) report significant SNP-based heritability for fusiform volume and thickness, linking distributed polygenic architecture to individual differences in this region’s structure and function.
Overview generated by GPT-4o (2026).
Region ID: 209
Hemisphere: bilateral
Atlas: Talairach labels 1mm
Full Quality Version: Download MP4
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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