Interventricular foramen at a glance
- What it is
- The interventricular foramen (of Monro) is the opening connecting each lateral ventricle to the third ventricle.
- Location
- It lies at the anterior end of the third ventricle, behind the column of the fornix and in front of the anterior thalamus.
- Function
- It allows cerebrospinal fluid to flow from the lateral ventricles into the third ventricle.
- Body system
- Nervous · single, midline structure
- FMA ID
- FMA75351 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Choroid plexus of the lateral and third ventricles is continuous through it.
- It is bounded in front by the column of the fornix and behind by the anterior pole of the thalamus.
- Each lateral ventricle has its own foramen, so there are two.
Clinical relevance
Blocking it, for example by a colloid cyst, causes hydrocephalus of the lateral ventricles.
Structures next to the interventricular foramen
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Pericallosal artery · cardiovascular
- Corpus callosum · nervous
- Anterior commissure · nervous
- Third ventricle · nervous
- Cingulate gyrus · nervous
- Caudate nucleus · nervous
- Internal capsule · nervous
- Lamina terminalis · nervous
- Choroid plexus of cerebral hemisphere · nervous
- Thalamus · nervous
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Interventricular foramen (FMA75351). 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.