Lingual Gyrus

Overview

The bilateral lingual gyrus is an occipital lobe structure located on the ventral surface of the brain, extending from the posterior calcarine sulcus anteriorly toward the fusiform gyrus and parahippocampal region. It is primarily involved in early and higher-order visual processing, including analysis of complex visual patterns, letter and word forms, and contributes to visuospatial integration and visual memory. The lingual gyrus participates in networks supporting reading, object recognition, and processing of scenes and faces, and shows strong connectivity with primary visual cortex, fusiform gyrus, and medial temporal structures. Functional imaging and lesion studies indicate roles in visual imagery, color processing, and the integration of visual input with semantic information. Lingual gyrus

The bilateral lingual gyrus, as defined in the Harvard–Oxford cortical maxprob thr25 2 mm atlas, has been implicated in several genetically influenced traits and disorders through genome-wide association and imaging–genetics studies, particularly via measures of cortical thickness, surface area and functional activation; variants in genes involved in neurodevelopment and synaptic function (e.g., BDNF, COMT, GRIN2B, and broader polygenic architecture for brain structure) have been associated with individual differences in lingual gyrus morphology and visual processing. GWAS of brain structural MRI (such as ENIGMA and UK Biobank–based studies) consistently report polygenic contributions to occipital and ventral visual cortex metrics that include the lingual gyrus, with heritability estimates indicating substantial genetic influence on its volume and thickness, and overlapping genetic signals with general cognitive ability, educational attainment, and intracranial volume. Functional and structural alterations in the lingual gyrus have also been linked, at the genetic level, to neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions including schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and migraine, where risk loci (for example in CACNA1C, CLU, and other synaptic or calcium-channel genes) show pleiotropic effects on both disease susceptibility and occipital/lingual gyrus structure or activation patterns, often in tasks involving visual processing, memory encoding, or emotional face perception.

Overview generated by GPT-4o (2026).

Region ID: 36
Hemisphere: bilateral
Atlas: HarvardOxford cort maxprob thr25 2mm

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