Caudate (Left)

Overview

The left caudate nucleus is a C-shaped gray matter structure within the dorsal striatum of the basal ganglia, situated lateral to the lateral ventricle and medial to the internal capsule, and is subdivided into head, body, and tail segments. It receives dense glutamatergic inputs from the cerebral cortex (particularly prefrontal and association areas) and thalamus, as well as dopaminergic projections from the substantia nigra pars compacta, and sends GABAergic outputs primarily to the globus pallidus and substantia nigra pars reticulata. Functionally, the left caudate is implicated in motor control, procedural and habit learning, goal-directed actions, reward processing, and aspects of executive function and cognition, including working memory and action selection. It is involved in cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical loops and is associated with neurological and psychiatric conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, obsessive–compulsive disorder, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Caudate nucleus

Genetic associations with left caudate volume and function, as defined in AAL2 and similar parcellations, have been identified in several large-scale GWAS and imaging-genetics studies, which collectively show that caudate morphology is highly polygenic and overlaps with risk architectures for neuropsychiatric and cognitive traits. Variants near or within genes involved in neurodevelopment, synaptic signaling, and neuronal plasticity—including multiple loci in glutamatergic and dopaminergic pathways—have been linked to caudate volume in ENIGMA and UK Biobank cohorts, although specific top hits often differ across studies and are frequently near regulatory elements rather than protein-coding regions. Left caudate structure and connectivity show genetic correlations with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, and obsessive–compulsive disorder, reflecting its role in frontostriatal circuits for cognitive control, reward, and habit learning. Polygenic risk scores for schizophrenia and ADHD have been associated with altered caudate volume or shape, and common variants in genes such as DRD2 and COMT, while not uniquely specific to this region, have repeatedly been implicated in striatal-related phenotypes, including caudate-dependent working memory, impulsivity, and reinforcement learning. Additionally, genetic influences on left caudate volume overlap with those for general cognitive ability, educational attainment, and motor traits, supporting a shared genetic basis for subcortical anatomy and complex behavioral outcomes, though no single gene has been established as a specific determinant of left caudate structure in the AAL2 framework.

Overview generated by GPT-4o (2026).

Region ID: 7001
Hemisphere: left
Atlas: AAL2

Caudate (Left) – Black Background (Full Brain)

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Caudate (Left) – White Background (Full Brain)

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Caudate (Left) – Black Background (Hemisphere)

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Caudate (Left) – White Background (Hemisphere)

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Triplanar View – T1 Background

Triplanar View – Ghost Brain