Michael Arcaro

About

Michael Arcaro, PhD, is a faculty member in the Biomedical Graduate Studies at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. His research combines neuroimaging, behavioral psychophysics, and electrophysiology to understand how intrinsic and experience-driven processes interact throughout development to shape brain organization and behavior. His current focus is on neural development supporting visual object recognition across mammalian species. His work explores how the mammalian brain's complex architecture, which varies in cyto- and chemo-architecture, connectivity, and functional response properties, supports perception and is shaped by experience. Dr. Arcaro's research aims to elucidate how environment influences neural development and how emerging neural architecture supports perception and behavior.

Research topics

• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Computer science
• Cognitive psychology
• Biology

Selected publications

• On the relationship between maps and domains in inferotemporal cortex

  Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2021-08-03 · 107 citations

  reviewOpen access1st author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Retinotopic organization of visual cortex in human infants

  Neuron · 2021-07-05 · 77 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sulcal Depth in the Medial Ventral Temporal Cortex Predicts the Location of a Place-Selective Region in Macaques, Children, and Adults

  Cerebral Cortex · 2020-08-04 · 68 citations

  articleOpen access

  The evolution and development of anatomical-functional relationships in the cerebral cortex is of major interest in neuroscience. Here, we leveraged the fact that a functional region selective for visual scenes is located within a sulcus in the medial ventral temporal cortex (VTC) in both humans and macaques to examine the relationship between sulcal depth and place selectivity in the medial VTC across species and age groups. To do so, we acquired anatomical and functional magnetic resonance ima…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Human thalamocortical structural connectivity develops in line with a hierarchical axis of cortical plasticity

  Nature Neuroscience · 2025-07-04 · 19 citations

  articleOpen access

  Human cortical development follows a hierarchical, sensorimotor-to-association sequence. The brain’s capacity to enact this sequence indicates that it relies on unknown mechanisms to regulate regional differences in the timing of cortical maturation. Given evidence from animal systems that thalamic axons mechanistically regulate periods of cortical plasticity, here we evaluate in humans whether the development of structural connections between the thalamus and cortex aligns with cortical maturat…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Expansion of a conserved architecture drives the evolution of the primate visual cortex

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-01-13 · 12 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Human brain evolution is marked by a disproportionate expansion of cortical regions associated with advanced perceptual and cognitive functions. While this expansion is often attributed to the emergence of novel specialized brain areas, modifications to evolutionarily conserved cortical regions also have been linked to species-specific behaviors. Distinguishing between these two evolutionary outcomes has been limited by the ability to make direct comparisons between species. Here, we addressed t…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Cameron T. Ellis

  57 shared

• Tristan S. Yates

  Yale University

  56 shared

• Nicholas B. Turk‐Browne

  Yale University

  56 shared

• Sabine Kästner

  31 shared

• Margaret S. Livingstone

  Harvard University

  31 shared

• Uri Hasson

  Neuroscience Institute

  17 shared

• Kendrick Kay

  Resonance Research (United States)

  12 shared

• Kevin S. Weiner

  University of California, Berkeley

  10 shared

Education

• PhD Psychology and Neuroscience, Psychology

  Princeton University

  2013

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