Parahippocampal gyrus at a glance
- What it is
- The parahippocampal gyrus is a gyrus on the medial temporal lobe, adjoining the hippocampus.
- Location
- It lies on the medial-inferior surface of the temporal lobe, between the hippocampal sulcus and the collateral sulcus.
- Function
- It is involved in memory encoding and retrieval and scene processing, and acts as the main route between the neocortex and hippocampus.
- Body system
- Nervous · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA72706 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Contains the entorhinal cortex at its anterior part.
- Its anterior end curves into the uncus.
Clinical relevance
Early Alzheimer disease affects the entorhinal cortex.
Structures next to the parahippocampal gyrus
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Lateral geniculate body · nervous
- Medial geniculate body · nervous
- Postcommunicating part of posterior cerebral artery · cardiovascular
- Fusiform gyrus · nervous
- Hippocampus · nervous
- Anterior choroidal artery · cardiovascular
- Brachium of inferior colliculus · nervous
- Superior cerebellar artery · cardiovascular
- Optic tract · nervous
- Inferior colliculus · nervous
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Parahippocampal gyrus (FMA72706). 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.