Fusiform gyrus at a glance
- What it is
- The fusiform gyrus is a long gyrus on the underside of the temporal and occipital lobes.
- Location
- It lies on the inferior surface of the temporal and occipital lobes, between the inferior temporal gyrus laterally and the parahippocampal gyrus medially, separated from them by the occipitotemporal and collateral sulci respectively.
- Function
- It is part of the ventral visual stream and is involved in object, face and word-form recognition.
- Body system
- Nervous · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA72690 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Also called the lateral occipitotemporal gyrus.
- Fusiform face area lies on its lateral part.
Clinical relevance
Damage to this region, especially bilateral, can cause prosopagnosia (face blindness).
Structures next to the fusiform gyrus
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Parahippocampal gyrus · nervous
- Hippocampus · nervous
- Anterior choroidal artery · cardiovascular
- Lateral geniculate body · nervous
- Inferior temporal gyrus · nervous
- Postcommunicating part of posterior cerebral artery · cardiovascular
- Medial geniculate body · nervous
- Superior cerebellar artery · cardiovascular
- Optic tract · nervous
- Amygdala · nervous
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Fusiform gyrus (FMA72690). EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service.
- OpenStax. Anatomy and Physiology 2e, §12.1 Basic Structure and Function of the Nervous System. 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.