The bilateral Right Cerebrum.Frontal Lobe.Precentral Gyrus.White Matter corresponds to the subcortical myelinated fiber tracts underlying the right precentral gyrus, the primary motor cortex region in the frontal lobe. These white matter pathways consist predominantly of corticospinal and corticobulbar projection fibers, along with intra-hemispheric association fibers, that transmit motor commands from the precentral cortical neurons to downstream motor nuclei in the brainstem and spinal cord, as well as to other cortical areas involved in motor planning and sensorimotor integration. Functionally, this region is critical for the execution of voluntary movements of the contralateral side of the body, and lesions here can disrupt motor output even when overlying cortical gray matter is relatively spared. There is no direct link for the specific white matter region; a closely related structure is the Precentral gyrus.
The bilateral right precentral gyrus white matter (Talairach “Right Cerebrum.Frontal Lobe.Precentral Gyrus.White Matter”) lies beneath primary motor cortex and has been implicated in several imaging-genetics and GWAS findings, largely through voxel-based or parcel-based association studies rather than region-specific candidate-gene work. Variants near genes involved in axonal development and myelination (e.g., CNTNAP2, NRG1, MAG, and broader oligodendrocyte-related pathways) have been associated with fractional anisotropy and other diffusion MRI measures in precentral/motor white matter, reflecting genetic influences on motor tract integrity. Large neuroimaging GWAS (such as ENIGMA and UK Biobank–based studies) have identified polygenic effects from loci including genes related to neurodevelopment (e.g., FOXP2, DCC) and general brain volume (e.g., HMGA2, IGF1 signaling) on cortical thickness and surface area in precentral/motor regions, with corresponding effects on adjacent white matter volume. Genetic risk for neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders—including schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, and Tourette syndrome—has been linked to structural and microstructural alterations in precentral/motor white matter tracts (such as corticospinal and frontostriatal pathways), with polygenic risk scores for these conditions predicting differences in precentral gyrus white matter metrics. Moreover, GWAS of motor skills, handedness, and general cognitive performance have shown overlaps with genetic architectures that contribute to precentral/motor cortex morphology and connectivity, suggesting that common variants influencing motor control and sensorimotor integration partly act through developmental effects on this region’s white matter microstructure, although findings remain distributed across the motor network rather than unique to this specific Talairach-defined parcel.
Overview generated by GPT-4o (2026).
Region ID: 687
Hemisphere: bilateral
Atlas: Talairach labels 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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