Internal capsule at a glance
- What it is
- The internal capsule is a V-shaped band of white matter carrying fibres between the cerebral cortex and the brainstem and spinal cord.
- Location
- It lies between the caudate nucleus and thalamus medially and the lentiform nucleus laterally, with anterior limb, genu and posterior limb.
- Function
- It carries corticospinal, corticobulbar and corticopontine fibres descending from the cortex and thalamocortical fibres ascending to it.
- Body system
- Nervous · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA72907 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Corticobulbar fibres classically pass through the genu and corticospinal fibres through the posterior limb; imaging suggests corticospinal fibres lie in its posterior part.
- Supplied by lenticulostriate branches of the middle cerebral artery, the anterior choroidal artery, and the recurrent artery of Heubner (anterior limb).
Clinical relevance
A small lesion, such as a lacunar stroke here, can cause contralateral hemiparesis.
Structures next to the internal capsule
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Caudate nucleus · nervous
- Globus pallidus · nervous
- Cingulate gyrus · nervous
- Anterolateral central branch of middle cerebral artery · cardiovascular
- Putamen · nervous
- Stria terminalis · nervous
- Fornix of forebrain · nervous
- Thalamus · nervous
- Pericallosal artery · cardiovascular
- Insula · nervous
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Internal capsule (FMA72907). 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.