Yaelan Jung¹ (), Rebecca Rennert², Hee Kyung Yoon³, Daniel Dilks⁴; ¹Emory University

Recent pediatric neuroimaging work shows that the occipital place area (OPA) supports visually guided navigation only around age 8. Why so late? Here, we tested whether delayed connectivity between OPA and primary visual cortex (V1) explains this trajectory. To do so, we measured OPA–V1 connectivity in 5- and 8-year-olds and adults, dividing V1 along its posterior–anterior axis to isolate foveal to peripheral representations. Using resting-state fMRI (in children and adults) and diffusion-weighted imaging (in adults), we found that adult OPA is selectively connected to peripheral V1 – unlike the parahippocampal place area (PPA), and retrosplenial complex (RSC), which are not involved in visually-guided navigation – consistent with behavioral evidence that visually-guided navigation relies most heavily on peripheral vision. In children, this OPA–peripheral V1 connectivity was absent at age 5 and emerged only by age 8, paralleling OPA’s prolonged functional development. By contrast, PPA and RSC already showed adult-like V1 connectivity by age 5, consistent with their earlier functional development. Together, these findings suggest that developing V1 connectivity scaffolds OPA’s late-emerging function, shedding light on how functional specialization arises in the developing brain.