The bilateral Left Cerebrum.Limbic Lobe.Parahippocampal Gyrus.Gray Matter.Brodmann area 36 corresponds to the lateral portion of the parahippocampal region in the medial temporal lobe, often considered part of the perirhinal cortex. This area is cytoarchitectonically defined by Brodmann’s classification as area 36 and is involved in higher-order visual association processing, object recognition, and memory functions, particularly familiarity-based recognition and the integration of multimodal sensory information with mnemonic processes. Functionally, it participates in the medial temporal memory system, interacting with the hippocampal formation and adjacent cortical areas to support encoding and retrieval of declarative memories and complex associative learning. There is no direct link for Brodmann area 36; a closely related structure is the Parahippocampal gyrus.
The bilateral parahippocampal gyrus gray matter in Brodmann area 36, as defined in the Talairach 2 mm atlas, is a medial temporal structure repeatedly implicated in imaging genetics and GWAS studies of brain morphology, episodic and autobiographical memory, and psychiatric risk. Large-scale neuroimaging GWAS (e.g., ENIGMA, UK Biobank) have identified common variants near genes involved in synaptic plasticity, axon guidance, and neurodevelopment (including loci near BDNF, DLG2, GRIN2B, and CACNA1C, among others) that associate with parahippocampal and broader medial temporal cortical thickness or volume, though findings are typically regionally distributed and not specific to BA36 alone. Parahippocampal and adjacent perirhinal cortex (overlapping BA36) show structural and functional alterations linked to polygenic risk scores for Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, major depression, and bipolar disorder, with APOE ε4 and other AD-related loci consistently associated with medial temporal atrophy and connectivity changes. GWAS of cognitive traits such as general cognitive ability, educational attainment, and memory performance often show that higher polygenic scores correlate with increased gray matter volume or more preserved microstructure in parahippocampal regions, and imaging genetics work in PTSD and anxiety disorders has tied variants in stress-response and HPA-axis genes (e.g., FKBP5) to altered parahippocampal activation and connectivity during fear and contextual memory tasks. Overall, genetic associations with this BA36 region tend to be embedded in broader medial temporal lobe and limbic network findings, linking common variation in neurodevelopmental, synaptic, and neurodegenerative pathways to structural and functional properties of the parahippocampal gyrus and its involvement in memory, emotion, and vulnerability to neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.
Overview generated by GPT-4o (2026).
Region ID: 129
Hemisphere: bilateral
Atlas: Talairach labels 2mm
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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