The cingulum is a bundle of nerve fibres forming the white-matter core of the cingulate gyrus. It runs from below the front of the corpus callosum, arches back over it and turns down into the temporal lobe, reaching the parahippocampal gyrus and the entorhinal cortex. [1][2]
A bundle has no shape of its own in this atlas; lit: the two parts it joins.
The 3D brain needs JavaScript. The legend below still names the two parts the cingulum joins.
The brain opens cut down the midline and seen from the right, so the inner face of the left half shows, where the bundle arches over the corpus callosum. One end is lit in blue (the cingulate gyrus), the other in orange (the parahippocampal gyrus); the bundle runs between them. Drag to turn, pinch or scroll to zoom; tap a lit part to name it.
The bundle itself is not drawn: BodyParts3D has no shape for any fasciculus, so the whole cingulate and parahippocampal gyri are lit, on both sides; the bundle runs under their grey matter. Where it turns down behind the corpus callosum it is not lit. [3][1]
The two ends: which colour is which
Upper end: the cingulate gyrus, lit in blue: the cingulate gyrus, on both sides of the brain.
Above, it lies inside the cingulate gyrus, which sits just above the corpus callosum on the inner face of each half; fibres from the frontal and parietal cortex and from the thalamus join and leave it along the way. [1][2][4]
Lower end: the parahippocampal gyrus, lit in orange: the parahippocampal gyrus, on both sides of the brain.
Below, its parahippocampal part runs in the parahippocampal gyrus of the temporal lobe to the entorhinal cortex and the uncus. [1][2]
The bundle runs between the blue and the orange parts; its fibres are not drawn.
It forms a near-complete ring: from the orbital frontal cortex, along the top of the corpus callosum, then down the temporal lobe towards its pole. [2]
It is not one cable from end to end: its make-up keeps changing as fibres join and leave the bundle all along its length. [2]
Tractography divides it into a subgenual part (below the front of the corpus callosum), a retrosplenial or supracallosal part (above it) and a parahippocampal part (in the temporal lobe). [2]
In the Papez circuit it carries the step from the cingulate gyrus to the entorhinal cortex. [5][1]
Imaging ties its upper (dorsal) part to executive control, emotion and pain, and its parahippocampal part to episodic memory. [2]
It was one of the earliest brain structures to be identified. [1]
Facts describe anatomy and normal function only. The 3D model is the adult male BodyParts3D brain (credits and licence); it has no shape for any fibre bundle, so a bundle is shown by the two parts it joins.