From adolescence to adulthood: functional fingerprints of high-level visual cortex reveal differential development of visuospatial processing

Reading, social interaction, and navigation rely on visuospatial computations by population receptive fields (pRFs) in category-selective regions of the ventral, lateral, and dorsal streams. However, how visuospatial computations vary across streams and category, or develop during adolescence is unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and pRF modeling in adolescents and adults, we investigate the development of pRFs and category-selectivity. Adolescents and adults show a consistent functional fingerprint whereby, pRF location, pRF size, and visual field coverage vary by category-selectivity, stream, and hemisphere. While pRF location is largely adult-like by adolescence, pRF size, visual field coverage, and category-selectivity exhibit region-specific increases and decreases from adolescence to adulthood. Together, these findings delineate a timeline of continued functional plasticity during adolescence and provide a multidimensional framework for understanding the organization of high-level visual cortex.