The area maps do contain the actual surface area of each vertex with units of 
mm^2.  The problem is that the area at a given vertex depends on how many 
vertices a given patch of
 cortex was divided into, which is initially uniform but then varies 
arbitrarily due
 to topology correction, rendering it useless for making statistical maps.

If you are interested in making statistical maps of between-group differences 
in surface area, the best way to do that is by calculating the areal expansion 
measure.  This is not a normally used feature of freesurfer, but is possible by 
using make_average_subject separately for each subject.

If you use the area values in the aparc stats files, those are the sum of area 
for all vertices in each parcellation, and they have units of surface area 
(unlike measures of areal expansion).



> From: jsadino.que...@gmail.com
> Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:57:38 -1000
> To: freesurfer@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu
> Subject: [Freesurfer] Surface Area and Cortical Volume
> 
> Hello,
> 
> As I understand it, the surface area measure is not a real surface
> area measure.  It is more a measure of how much the brain has to be
> stretched in order to get into a common space.  My question is that if
> the cortical volume is calculated by multiplying the thickness and the
> surface area (right?), then is it a real volume that can be compared
> between subjects?
> 
> Also, is it is more accurate to use the cortical volume measures from
> the aparc files rather than the aseg files, since the aseg files
> overestimate the white matter due to the manual tracing it is based
> on?
> 
> Thank you,
> Jeff
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