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Reply to “Has a new color area been discovered”

Nature Neuroscience volume 1, pages 335–336 (1998)Cite this article

Tootell and Hadjikhani reply – Macaque V4 is a cortical visual area that is often subdivided into dorsal and ventral parts ('V4d' and 'V4v'), comprising the retinotopic representations of the lower and upper visual fields, respectively. This has been reported in numerous articles and is not in dispute. Nevertheless, Zeki and colleagues make the following claims: (1) human area V4v "seems to have no monkey equivalent, and thus [it] represents the real new discovery," and (2) our human area V8 is actually equivalent to macaque V4. Their claim is based on three properties that they require of human V4: (3) human V4 should include a representation of both upper and lower visual fields, (4) human V4 should be color-selective and (5) human V4 coincides with the neural region affected in clinical achromatopsia.

(2) Almost all work from macaque V4 (including Zeki's reports of color selectivity) has been based on recordings from the dorsal subdivision of V4, 'V4d'. Can the human equivalent of macaque V4d be the area involved in human achromatopsia (in the collateral sulcus/fusiform gyrus)? All aspects of the human cortical map (including the topography of V4v) confirm that any human homologue of V4d would be located superior to V4v, and between V3A and MT, exactly as in macaques ( Fig. 2a–c ). Thus, V4d should be even farther from the human color area than V4v. Retinotopic maps taken from human V4d have not been published yet, but the macaque maps would predict a lower visual field representation there.

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Figure 2: Comparison of visual cortical maps in Old World primates, drawn by different authors.

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  1. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, 149 13th Street, Charlestown , 02129, Massachusetts, USA

    R. B. H. Tootell & N. Hadjikhani

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  1. R. B. H. Tootell
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Tootell, R., Hadjikhani, N. Reply to “Has a new color area been discovered”. Nat Neurosci 1, 335–336 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/1539

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