The bilateral Right Cerebrum.Temporal Lobe.Superior Temporal Gyrus.Gray Matter.Brodmann area 41 corresponds primarily to the primary auditory cortex situated on the transverse temporal (Heschl’s) gyrus within the superior temporal region of the right hemisphere. This cortical area receives topographically organized auditory input from the medial geniculate nucleus of the thalamus and is critical for early-stage processing of acoustic features such as frequency, intensity, and temporal patterns. Functionally, it participates in the discrimination and integration of complex sounds, contributing to music perception, sound localization, and the right-lateralized aspects of auditory scene analysis, while interacting extensively with adjacent auditory association areas (e.g., BA42 and BA22) for higher-order auditory and language-related processing. There is no direct Wikipedia article for Brodmann area 41; a closely related structure is Primary auditory cortex.
The bilateral right superior temporal gyrus gray matter in Brodmann area 41, a primary auditory cortex region, has been implicated in several genetic and GWAS-based findings, largely through imaging genetics and disorder-related studies rather than region-specific GWAS alone. Variants in genes regulating synaptic function, neurodevelopment, and cortical morphology—such as CNTNAP2, FOXP2, GRIN2A, and language-related loci identified in large-scale GWAS of speech and reading—have been associated with structural and functional differences in temporal auditory cortices, including BA41, particularly in phonological processing, speech perception, and language lateralization. Imaging genetics studies from consortia like ENIGMA and UK Biobank have linked common variants (e.g., in genes influencing neuronal migration and cortical thickness, such as those near RSPO3, HMGA2, and KIAA0586) to superior temporal gyrus volume, cortical thickness, and surface area, traits that encompass auditory and language-related cortex. BA41 is frequently implicated in GWAS and candidate gene studies of neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders, including schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, and specific language impairment, where risk alleles in synaptic and glutamatergic genes (e.g., GRM3, NRG1, DISC1-related pathways) show associations with altered superior temporal gyrus structure or activity, auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia, and atypical speech and language processing. Additionally, risk loci for age-related hearing impairment and tinnitus (such as variants near PCDH20 and other cochlear and synaptic genes) have been linked to differences in auditory cortex responsiveness, with BA41 involvement inferred from functional imaging. Although no large GWAS has targeted “BA41 gray matter” as an isolated phenotype, convergent genetic, imaging, and clinical evidence indicates that polygenic influences on language, auditory processing, and psychiatric risk are partly expressed through structural and functional variation in the right superior temporal gyrus, including Brodmann area 41.
Overview generated by GPT-4o (2026).
Region ID: 673
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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