Hippocampus at a glance
- What it is
- The hippocampus is a curved cortical structure in the medial temporal lobe that is essential for forming new long-term memories.
- Location
- It lies in the floor of the temporal horn of the lateral ventricle, within the medial temporal lobe next to the parahippocampal gyrus.
- Function
- It is required for consolidating declarative (episodic and semantic) memories and for spatial navigation.
- Body system
- Nervous · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA72714 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Main output is through the fornix.
- Part of the limbic system and Papez circuit.
- Subregions include the dentate gyrus and cornu ammonis (CA1 to CA4).
- Its head bears ridges called the pes hippocampi; the fimbria along its medial edge continues as the crus of the fornix.
Clinical relevance
Hippocampal damage causes anterograde amnesia, and it is among the first regions affected in Alzheimer disease.
Structures next to the hippocampus
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Anterior choroidal artery · cardiovascular
- Lateral geniculate body · nervous
- Fusiform gyrus · nervous
- Parahippocampal gyrus · nervous
- Medial geniculate body · nervous
- Postcommunicating part of posterior cerebral artery · cardiovascular
- Fornix of forebrain · nervous
- Optic tract · nervous
- Stria terminalis · nervous
- Amygdala · nervous
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Hippocampus (FMA72714). 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.