Occipital lobe at a glance
- What it is
- The occipital lobe is the posterior lobe of the cerebral hemisphere, and the primary visual centre.
- Location
- It lies at the back of the brain, behind the parieto-occipital sulcus, beneath the occipital bone, and above the tentorium cerebelli.
- Function
- It processes visual information. Primary visual cortex (V1) lies along the calcarine sulcus, and surrounding areas handle further visual analysis.
- Body system
- Nervous · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA72976 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Supplied mainly by the posterior cerebral artery.
- Receives the optic radiation from the lateral geniculate body.
Clinical relevance
Lesions cause contralateral homonymous hemianopia, often with macular sparing in posterior cerebral artery stroke.
Structures next to the occipital lobe
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Medial occipital artery · cardiovascular
- Occipital bone · skeletal
- Angular gyrus · nervous
- Tentorium cerebelli · nervous
- Superior parietal lobule · nervous
- Cerebellum · nervous
- Posterior inferior cerebellar artery · cardiovascular
- Pineal body · endocrine
- Posterior part of superior temporal gyrus · nervous
- Parietal bone · skeletal
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Occipital lobe (FMA72976). 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.