The bilateral Left Cerebrum.Occipital Lobe.Middle Occipital Gyrus.Gray Matter.Brodmann area 18 corresponds to secondary visual cortex (V2) located in the occipital lobe, adjacent to the primary visual cortex (Brodmann area 17). This region receives highly organized input from V1 and further processes visual information, including orientation, spatial frequency, color, and more complex features involved in pattern recognition and visual contour integration. Neuronal populations in BA18 contribute to early stages of visual perception and are part of distributed networks supporting object recognition, motion processing, and visual attention. There is no direct link for “Middle Occipital Gyrus, Brodmann area 18”; a related structure is Brodmann area 18.
Brodmann area 18 (secondary visual cortex, V2) in the middle occipital gyrus is frequently implicated in imaging-genetics and GWAS studies of visual processing, cortical structure, and neuropsychiatric phenotypes. Common variants in genes involved in synaptic development and plasticity (e.g., BDNF, NRGN, GRIN2B, CACNA1C) have been associated with occipital gray matter volume, cortical thickness, or activation during visual tasks, and large imaging GWAS from consortia such as ENIGMA and UK Biobank have identified numerous loci influencing occipital cortical morphology, including genes related to neuronal migration, axon guidance, and myelination (e.g., HMGA2, TESC, PLEKHG1, and others), some of which overlap loci for general cognitive ability and educational attainment. Genetic risk for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, and autism spectrum disorder shows distributed effects across the cortex, with polygenic risk scores and specific risk variants (such as those in complement pathway genes like C4A, and synaptic genes like CACNA1C and ZNF804A) linked to altered functional connectivity and task-related activation in visual association regions including BA18. Occipital BA18 has also been implicated in genetic studies of disorders with prominent visual or perceptual components, such as migraine with aura and visual hallucinations in Parkinson’s disease or Lewy body dementia, where risk variants (e.g., in HTR1F, KCNK5, and dopaminergic or serotonergic genes) are associated with altered activation or structure in occipital visual cortices. Additionally, GWAS of visual acuity, refractive error, and related traits have revealed shared genetic architecture between primary and secondary visual areas, suggesting that common variants regulating neurodevelopment and plasticity of the occipital lobe contribute to both normal visual function and vulnerability to neuropsychiatric and neurological disorders involving BA18.
Overview generated by GPT-4o (2026).
Region ID: 306
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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