Optic tract at a glance
- What it is
- The optic tract is the pathway of visual fibres from the optic chiasm to the lateral geniculate body.
- Location
- It extends backward from the chiasm around the cerebral peduncle to the lateral geniculate body of the thalamus.
- Function
- It carries fibres from the ipsilateral temporal retina and contralateral nasal retina, representing the contralateral visual field. Some fibres go to the superior colliculus and pretectum.
- Body system
- Nervous · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA67936 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Lesions affect vision on the opposite side of the visual field in both eyes.
- About 10% of its fibres leave before the lateral geniculate body for the pretectal area (pupillary light reflex) and superior colliculus.
Clinical relevance
A lesion causes contralateral homonymous hemianopia.
Structures next to the optic tract
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Postcommunicating part of posterior cerebral artery · cardiovascular
- Anterior choroidal artery · cardiovascular
- Peduncle of midbrain · nervous
- Mammillary body · nervous
- Stria terminalis · nervous
- Midbrain · nervous
- Fornix of forebrain · nervous
- Medial geniculate body · nervous
- Precommunicating part of posterior cerebral artery · cardiovascular
- Third ventricle · nervous
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Optic tract (FMA67936). 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.
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