Anterior communicating artery at a glance
- What it is
- The anterior communicating artery is a short vessel that links the two anterior cerebral arteries.
- Location
- It crosses the midline in front of the optic chiasm and joins the right and left anterior cerebral arteries, closing the front of the circle of Willis.
- Function
- It allows blood to be shared between the two cerebral hemispheres if one carotid supply is reduced.
- Body system
- Cardiovascular · single, midline structure
- FMA ID
- FMA50169 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- It is among the shortest arteries of the brain.
- Its perforating branches supply the fornix, anterior hypothalamus and septal region.
Clinical relevance
It is the most common site of intracranial saccular (berry) aneurysm.
Structures next to the anterior communicating artery
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Optic chiasm · nervous
- Anterior cerebral artery · cardiovascular
- Lamina terminalis · nervous
- Pituitary gland · endocrine
- Hypothalamus · nervous
- Posterior communicating artery · cardiovascular
- Precommunicating part of posterior cerebral artery · cardiovascular
- Trochlear nerve · nervous
- Anterior commissure · nervous
- Mammillary body · nervous
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Anterior communicating artery (FMA50169). EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service.
- OpenStax. Anatomy and Physiology 2e, §20.1 Structure and Function of Blood Vessels. Rice University, 2022.
- Mitsuhashi N. et al. (2009). BodyParts3D: 3D structure database for anatomical concepts. Nucleic Acids Research 37, D782–D785. Data © The Database Center for Life Science, CC BY 4.0.
Related anatomy
Explore the whole body in the interactive 3D human anatomy model, or browse the A–Z list of human structures.