The bilateral Left Cerebrum.Occipital Lobe.Fusiform Gyrus.Gray Matter.Brodmann area 37 corresponds to a cortical region located on the ventral surface of the occipital–temporal junction within the fusiform gyrus, primarily involved in high-level visual processing and multimodal integration. Brodmann area 37 is strongly associated with object and face recognition, processing of complex visual stimuli, and aspects of visual word form recognition, acting as a key node in the ventral visual stream that links perceptual representations with semantic memory. Its gray matter comprises densely packed pyramidal neurons arranged in a laminar pattern typical of association cortex, receiving extensive inputs from primary and secondary visual areas and projecting to temporal and frontal association regions. Lateralization and hemispheric specialization within this bilateral region contribute to functions such as language-related visual processing (left hemisphere) and face and scene recognition (right hemisphere). There is no direct Wikipedia article for this exact Talairach label; a closely related structure is Brodmann area 37.
The bilateral left fusiform gyrus (occipital lobe, Brodmann area 37) is a key region for high-level visual processing, particularly word and face recognition, and genetic associations largely reflect these functions. GWAS and candidate gene studies of developmental dyslexia and reading ability implicate loci such as DCDC2, KIAA0319, ROBO1, and FOXP2, often linked to altered gray matter volume or functional activation in the left fusiform “visual word form area.” In face processing and prosopagnosia, variants in genes related to synaptic function and neurodevelopment (e.g., GRIN2B, CNTNAP2, and broader neurodevelopmental GWAS hits) have been associated with fusiform structure and activity, though findings are still emerging and often polygenic. Large neuroimaging-genetics consortia (e.g., ENIGMA, UK Biobank) have identified common variants influencing occipito-temporal cortical thickness and surface area—such as loci near DAAM1, TCF4, and IGF1—that show associations with fusiform morphology, and some of these variants overlap with risk loci for schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders, and major depression, consistent with reports of fusiform abnormalities in these conditions. Additionally, polygenic scores for educational attainment, general cognitive ability, and language-related traits correlate with left occipito-temporal gray matter measures, reinforcing a highly polygenic architecture in which many common variants of small effect jointly influence the structure and function of Brodmann area 37.
Overview generated by GPT-4o (2026).
Region ID: 329
Hemisphere: bilateral
Atlas: Talairach labels 2mm
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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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