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White matter connections of human ventral temporal cortex are organized by cytoarchitecture, eccentricity and category-selectivity from birth

Nature Human Behaviour volume 9, pages 955–970 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Category-selective regions in ventral temporal cortex (VTC) have a consistent anatomical organization, which is hypothesized to be scaffolded by white matter connections. However, it is unknown how white matter connections are organized from birth. Here we scanned newborn to 6-month-old infants and adults to determine the organization of the white matter connections of VTC. We find that white matter connections are organized by cytoarchitecture, eccentricity and category from birth. Connectivity profiles of functional regions in the same cytoarchitectonic area are similar from birth and develop in parallel, with decreases in endpoint connectivity to lateral occipital, parietal and somatosensory cortex, and increases in connectivity to lateral prefrontal cortex. In addition, connections between VTC and early visual cortex are organized topographically by eccentricity bands and predict eccentricity biases in VTC. These data show that there are both innate organizing principles of white matter connections of VTC, and capacity for white matter connections to change over development.

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Fig. 1: Functional atlas and analysis pipeline.
Fig. 2: White matter connections are organized by cytoarchitecture and category from infancy.
Fig. 3: White matter connections of VTC are organized by eccentricity from birth.
Fig. 4: Connectivity of VTC develops from infancy to adulthood.

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Data availability

The data to make the figures, tables and statistics associated with this paper are available on GitHub at https://github.com/VPNL/bbVTCwm/tree/main/data (ref. 138). Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The code to analyse the data, compute statistics and make the individual figure elements is available on GitHub at https://github.com/VPNL/bbVTCwm/ (ref. 139). The code folder contains the R code used to generate all other figures and statistics in the figures/and statistics/subdirectories. The code used to preprocess the data and perform the analyses is included in the analyses/subdirectory. The label files for the fROIs and the EVC ROIs are provided in the labels folder. The supplement folder contains code to generate supplementary figures.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by Stanford Wu Tsai Neurodevelopment big idea and accelerator grants, as well as NIH grants R01EY033835 and R01EY022318 to K.G.-S.; the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (grant number DGE-1656518) to E.K.; the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation – project number 222641018 – SFB/TRR 135 TP C10), as well as ‘The Adaptive Mind’, funded by the Excellence Program of the Hessian Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Art to M.G.; the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation – grant INST 169/22–1), the Excellence Program of the Hessian Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Art (grants: 2/16/519/03/09.001(0001)/101 and LOEWE/4TP//519/05/02.002(0004)/107) to B.K. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Emily Kubota, Sarah Tung, Christina Tyagi, Sophie Duhameau, Danya Ortiz, Vaidehi S. Natu & Kalanit Grill-Spector

  2. Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Xiaoqian Yan

  3. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Bella Fascendini

  4. Department of Psychology, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Mareike Grotheer

  5. Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior – CMBB, Universities of Marburg, Giessen and Darmstadt, Marburg, Germany

    Mareike Grotheer & Boris Keil

  6. Institute of Medical Physics and Radiation Protection, TH Mittelhessen University of Applied Sciences, Giessen, Germany

    Boris Keil

  7. Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital Marburg, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Boris Keil

  8. LOEWE Research Cluster for Advanced Medical Physics in Imaging and Therapy (ADMIT), TH Mittelhessen University of Applied Sciences, Giessen, Germany

    Boris Keil

  9. Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, Stanford, CA, USA

    Kalanit Grill-Spector

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  1. Emily Kubota
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  2. Xiaoqian Yan
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  4. Bella Fascendini
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Contributions

E.K. designed the analyses, wrote the code and data analysis pipelines, analysed the data and wrote the paper. X.Y. participated in the design and data analysis, and collected the data. S.T., B.F. and C.T. collected the data, segmented each brain anatomy image into grey and white matter, and created cortical surface reconstructions. S.D. and D.O. validated the alignment between fROIs, cytoarchitectonic areas and anatomical landmarks. M.G. participated in the data analyses. V.S.N. participated in the design and data analysis and collected the data. B.K. designed the infant coil used for data collection. K.G.-S. oversaw all parts of the research: design, data analysis, and wrote the paper. All authors read and gave feedback on the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emily Kubota.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Douglas Dean, Edward Silson and Hiromasa Takemura for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–56 and Tables 1–8.

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Supplementary Video 1

White matter connections between mFus-faces and early visual cortex in an example newborn participant. Streamlines are coloured by eccentricity band. Red: 0–5°, green: 5–10°, blue: 10–20°.

Supplementary Video 2

White matter connections between CoS-places and early visual cortex in an example newborn participant. Streamlines are coloured by eccentricity band. Red: 0–5°, green: 5–10°, blue: 10–20°.

Supplementary Video 3

White matter connections between mFus-faces and early visual cortex in an example adult. Streamlines are coloured by eccentricity band. Red: 0–5°, green: 5–10°, blue: 10–20°.

Supplementary Video 4

White matter connections between CoS-places and early visual cortex in an example adult participant. Streamlines are coloured by eccentricity band. Red: 0–5°, green: 5–10°, blue: 10–20°.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 2

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 2

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 3

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 4

Statistical source data for slope plots.

Source Data Fig. 4

Statistical source data for slope plots.

Source Data Fig. 4

Statistical source data for slope plots.

Source Data Fig. 4

Statistical source data for slope plots.

Source Data Fig. 4

Statistical source data for slope plots.

Source Data Fig. 4

Statistical source data for slope plots.

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Kubota, E., Yan, X., Tung, S. et al. White matter connections of human ventral temporal cortex are organized by cytoarchitecture, eccentricity and category-selectivity from birth. Nat Hum Behav 9, 955–970 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02116-6

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