Today I feature an edition of my occasional “Best of…” series in which I reread the blog posts of each month and repost my favorite one. Here’s my favorite for November ’07:
“The pineal gland is innervated by the nervi conarii. This name was derived from the fact that an antiquated term for the pineal gland is the "conarium", which literally means "cone". The nervi conarii are sympathetic fibers with cell bodies situated in the superior cervical ganglion.”
I might add that sympathetic postganglionic nerve fibers from the superior cervical ganglia provide norandrenergic input that induces melatonin production by the pineal gland.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
Shannon Curran, MS with her dissection Shannon Curran, a graduate student in the Modern Human Anatomy Program at the University of Co... -
Last summer I put up a post about a remarkable whole nervous system dissection that was carried out at the University of Colorado School of ...
3 comments:
What's the etymology of the habenular nuclei?
'Habenular' is Latin for 'little reins', as the pineal was at one time thought to be the seat of the soul from which the ebb and flow of the ventricular humours were controlled via the habenular tracts.
Very good!
Post a Comment