The bilateral left cerebrum middle frontal gyrus is a portion of the dorsolateral frontal lobe situated between the superior and inferior frontal sulci, extending anteriorly from the precentral gyrus toward the frontal pole. It comprises parts of Brodmann areas commonly associated with executive and higher-order cognitive functions, including working memory, attentional control, planning, decision-making, and aspects of motor preparation. This gyrus participates in large-scale frontoparietal networks supporting goal-directed behavior and cognitive flexibility, integrates multimodal sensory and internal state information, and contributes to top-down modulation of other cortical and subcortical regions. Middle frontal gyrus
The bilateral left middle frontal gyrus, as defined in the Talairach 1 mm atlas, has been repeatedly implicated in genetic and GWAS-based studies examining higher-order cognition, psychiatric risk, and brain structural variation, with many associations emerging from imaging-genetics and large consortia such as ENIGMA and UK Biobank. Common variants in genes related to synaptic development and plasticity (e.g., BDNF, NRG1, DISC1) and glutamatergic and dopaminergic signaling (e.g., COMT, DRD2, GRIN2B) have been linked to differences in middle frontal (dorsolateral prefrontal) cortical thickness, surface area, or activation during working memory and executive function tasks. Polygenic risk scores for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder show robust associations with reduced thickness or altered functional activation in this region, while autism spectrum disorder and ADHD risk variants have been associated with atypical development and connectivity of the middle frontal gyrus, particularly in networks supporting attention and cognitive control. GWAS of brain morphometry have identified multiple loci (e.g., in genes such as MIR137, TCF4, and other neurodevelopmental and chromatin-remodeling genes) associated with prefrontal measures that include or overlap the middle frontal gyrus, and these loci often overlap with risk variants for schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric conditions. Additionally, genetic influences on intelligence, educational attainment, and general cognitive ability frequently converge on structural and functional variation within the middle frontal gyrus, indicating that this region is a key anatomical substrate where polygenic effects on cognition and psychiatric vulnerability manifest at the level of brain structure and function.
Overview generated by GPT-4o (2026).
Region ID: 753
Hemisphere: bilateral
Atlas: Talairach labels 1mm
Full Quality Version: Download MP4
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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