Third ventricle at a glance
- What it is
- The third ventricle is a narrow midline CSF-filled cavity of the diencephalon.
- Location
- It lies between the two halves of the thalamus and hypothalamus, connected to the lateral ventricles by the interventricular foramina and to the fourth ventricle by the cerebral aqueduct.
- Function
- It circulates CSF between the lateral and fourth ventricles.
- Body system
- Nervous · single, midline structure
- FMA ID
- FMA78454 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Anterior wall is the lamina terminalis.
- Contains choroid plexus in its roof.
Clinical relevance
Obstruction can cause hydrocephalus.
Structures next to the third ventricle
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Choroid plexus of cerebral hemisphere · nervous
- Peduncle of midbrain · nervous
- Mammillary body · nervous
- Posterior commissure · nervous
- Midbrain · nervous
- Thalamus · nervous
- Stria terminalis · nervous
- Hair of head · skin
- Corpus callosum · nervous
- Commissure of fornix of forebrain · nervous
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Third ventricle (FMA78454). 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.