The bilateral Uncinate fasciculus (right) is a hook-shaped association white matter tract that connects the anterior temporal lobe, including the amygdala and temporal pole, with the orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortices, forming part of the limbic and paralimbic connectivity network. It courses medially through the temporal stem and curves around the Sylvian fissure, linking structures involved in emotion, memory, reward processing, and higher-order social and decision-making functions. This tract is implicated in emotional regulation, episodic memory, language-related semantic processing, and the integration of affective information into executive control; structural or functional alterations in the uncinate fasciculus have been associated with psychiatric and neurological conditions such as anxiety disorders, depression, schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury, and frontotemporal dementias.
Uncinate fasciculus
The right uncinate fasciculus, as defined in the JHU ICBM tracts maxprob atlas, has been implicated in multiple genetic and GWAS-based associations involving white matter microstructure, psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions, and cognitive-emotional traits. Diffusion MRI heritability studies show substantial genetic influence on fractional anisotropy and other diffusion metrics in the uncinate fasciculus, with polygenic effects distributed across the genome rather than single large-effect loci. Large brain-wide imaging genetics consortia (e.g., ENIGMA, UK Biobank) have identified common variants associated with uncinate fasciculus integrity, including loci near genes involved in axon guidance, myelination, and neuronal development (such as those related to neurotrophic signaling and cell adhesion), although these findings tend to be polygenic and not unique to this tract. Genetically informed studies have linked altered uncinate fasciculus structure to risk alleles for major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety traits, and autism spectrum disorder, consistent with the tract’s role in fronto-limbic connectivity; specific candidate gene work has reported associations of serotonin transporter (SLC6A4), BDNF, and other neurotransmission- or plasticity-related variants with microstructural differences in the uncinate fasciculus. Additionally, GWAS of brain connectivity and personality or cognitive-emotional measures (such as neuroticism, emotion regulation, and social cognition) frequently implicate polygenic architectures that overlap with genetic influences on uncinate fasciculus integrity, suggesting that this right-lateralized tract participates in a genetically modulated network underpinning emotional processing, impulsivity, and higher-order social behavior, though no single disorder-specific “uncinate gene” has been established.
Overview generated by GPT-4o (2026).
Region ID: 18
Hemisphere: bilateral
Atlas: JHU ICBM tracts maxprob thr25 2mm
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Full Quality Version: Download MP4
Wali Sidiqyar*, Gaurav Rudravaram*, Elyssa M. McMaster, Trent M. Schwartz, Adam M. Saunders, Kurt G. Schilling, Bennett A. Landman "Introducing SPINS: A Shared Public Visualization Library of Neuroanatomical Structures." Medical Imaging with Deep Learning- short paper
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