The bilateral Left Cerebrum.Occipital Lobe.Lingual Gyrus.Gray Matter.Brodmann area 17 corresponds to the primary visual cortex (V1) located along the calcarine fissure within the lingual gyrus of the occipital lobe. This cytoarchitectonically defined region receives the bulk of direct retinal input via the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus and is organized retinotopically, with distinct areas of the cortical surface mapping to specific positions in the visual field. Neurons in Brodmann area 17 are specialized for initial processing of fundamental visual attributes such as orientation, spatial frequency, contrast, and ocular dominance, providing the essential substrate for conscious visual perception and higher-order visual processing in extrastriate areas.
Primary visual cortex
The bilateral left cerebrum occipital lobe lingual gyrus gray matter Brodmann area 17 (primary visual cortex, V1) has been implicated in genetic studies largely through imaging genetics and GWAS of brain structure and visual-related traits rather than through region-specific single-gene associations. Large-scale GWAS of cortical surface area and thickness (e.g., ENIGMA, UK Biobank) have identified multiple loci—often near genes involved in neurodevelopment and synaptic function (such as variants near PAX6, TBR1, and other transcriptional regulators of cortical patterning)—that influence occipital and lingual gyrus morphology, although these findings typically report broader occipital or visual cortex measures rather than Brodmann area 17 alone. Polygenic risk for neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, autism spectrum disorder) has been associated with altered occipital and lingual gyrus structure and functional activation in imaging-genetic studies, suggesting that visual cortex organization is modulated by many small-effect alleles rather than single, region-specific genes. GWAS of visual acuity, refractive error (myopia), and visual perception traits also show genetic correlations with occipital lobe cortical metrics, indicating partially shared genetic architecture between peripheral visual traits and structural features of V1. Additionally, heritability estimates from twin and family studies show substantial genetic influence on primary visual cortex volume, thickness, and surface area, and imaging-genetics work in migraine and visual aura, dyslexia, and hallucination-related phenotypes has linked risk variants and polygenic scores to functional and structural variation in this region, though specific causal genes and mechanisms for Brodmann area 17 remain incompletely defined and highly polygenic.
Overview generated by GPT-4o (2026).
Region ID: 242
Hemisphere: bilateral
Atlas: Talairach labels 2mm
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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