Precentral gyrus at a glance
- What it is
- The precentral gyrus is the primary motor cortex of the frontal lobe.
- Location
- It lies immediately in front of the central sulcus (Brodmann area 4).
- Function
- It controls voluntary movement of the opposite side of the body, in a somatotopic motor homunculus.
- Body system
- Nervous · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA72662 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Contains giant pyramidal Betz cells.
- A major source of the corticospinal tract (about a third of its fibres).
- Leg area is on the medial surface.
Clinical relevance
Lesions cause contralateral weakness or paralysis.
Structures next to the precentral gyrus
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Postcentral gyrus · nervous
- Parietal bone · skeletal
- White matter of cerebral hemisphere · nervous
- Supramarginal gyrus · nervous
- Cingulate gyrus · nervous
- Insula · nervous
- Internal capsule · nervous
- Lateral ventricle · nervous
- Caudate nucleus · nervous
- Superior frontal gyrus · nervous
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Precentral gyrus (FMA72662). 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.