Normative cerebral cortical thickness for human visual areas

Abstract

1Studies of changes in cerebral neocortical thickness often rely on small control samples for comparison with specific populations with abnormal visual systems. We present a normative dataset for FreeSurfer-derived cortical thickness across 25 human visual areas derived from 960 participants in the Human Connectome Project. Cortical thickness varies systematically across visual areas, in broad agreement with canonical visual system hierarchies in the dorsal and ventral pathways. In addition, cortical thickness estimates show consistent within-subject variability and reliability. Importantly, cortical thickness estimates in visual areas are well described by a normal distribution, making them amenable to direct statistical comparison.\n\nHighlightsO_LINormative neocortical thickness values for human visual areas measured with FreeSurfer\nC_LIO_LIA gradient of increasing neocortical thickness with visual area hierarchy\nC_LIO_LIConsistent within- and between-subject variability in neocortical thickness across visual areas\nC_LI