Postcentral gyrus at a glance
- What it is
- The postcentral gyrus is the primary somatosensory cortex of the parietal lobe.
- Location
- It lies immediately behind the central sulcus, in front of the postcentral sulcus (Brodmann areas 3, 1 and 2).
- Function
- It receives sensory information for touch, pressure, vibration, proprioception and pain from the opposite side of the body, mapped in a sensory homunculus.
- Body system
- Nervous · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA72666 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Receives input from the ventral posterior nuclei of the thalamus.
- Leg area is on the medial surface; face area is lateral.
Clinical relevance
Lesions cause contralateral loss of fine touch and proprioception.
Structures next to the postcentral gyrus
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Precentral gyrus · nervous
- Parietal bone · skeletal
- Supramarginal gyrus · nervous
- White matter of cerebral hemisphere · nervous
- Superior parietal lobule · nervous
- Angular gyrus · nervous
- Lateral ventricle · nervous
- Posterior part of superior temporal gyrus · nervous
- Cingulate gyrus · nervous
- Medial occipital artery · cardiovascular
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Postcentral gyrus (FMA72666). 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.