Cover image
Cover Picture: The cover illustrates the important contribution of the statistics of the visual world in shaping the organization of cortical activation patterns. In the absence of visual stimulation, in what has been termed the “resting state”, the human visual cortex spontaneously generates a complex pattern of coherent activations that are highly reproducible over time. However, the source and significance of these patterns is still unclear. A fMRI study has revealed that these resting-state patterns are similar to patterns of activations produced by naturalistic visual stimuli. These findings raise the possibility that the spontaneous patterns would provide a new window into cortical networks' activity during habitual ecological conditions. See Wilf et al. 2017. Spontaneously emerging patterns in human visual cortex reflect responses to naturalistic sensory stimuli. Cereb Cortex 27(1): 750-763.