enteric nervous system

The enteric nervous system is composed of two ganglionated neural plexuses in the gut wall which form one of the three major divisions of the autonomic nervous system. The enteric nervous system innervates the gastrointestinal tract, the pancreas, and the gall bladder. It contains sensory neurons, interneurons, and motor neurons. Thus the circuitry can autonomously sense the tension and the chemical environment in the gut and regulate blood vessel tone, motility, secretions, and fluid transport. The system is itself governed by the central nervous system and receives both parasympathetic and sympathetic innervation[GO]. Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.

What the enteric nervous system is

The enteric nervous system is composed of two ganglionated neural plexuses in the gut wall which form one of the three major divisions of the autonomic nervous system. The enteric nervous system innervates the gastrointestinal tract, the pancreas, and the gall bladder. It contains sensory neurons, interneurons, and motor neurons. Thus the circuitry can autonomously sense the tension and the chemical environment in the gut and regulate blood vessel tone, motility, secretions, and fluid transport. The system is itself governed by the central nervous system and receives both parasympathetic and sympathetic innervation[GO]. The atlas records it as a system at the system scale in the human body.

Where the enteric nervous system is

It sits within the nervous system. Only the system is known. The position shown carries almost no spatial information.

What the enteric nervous system connects to

The atlas records 8 typed relationships for it, across 4 kinds of connection. part of autonomic nervous system.

Supply and innervation

This dataset asserts no arterial supply, venous drainage or innervation for the enteric nervous system. Only a minority of structures carry those edges here, so an empty answer means nothing has been recorded — not that there is nothing to record.

Also called

Also recorded as PNS - enteric and enteric PNS. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0002005, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

• Part of: autonomic nervous system.
• A kind of: organ system subdivision.
• contributes to morphology of: autonomic nervous system, enteric ganglion, myenteric nerve plexus and submucous nerve plexus.
• contains: enteric ganglion and enteric plexus.

Questions

Where is the enteric nervous system?

It sits within the nervous system. Only the system is known. The position shown carries almost no spatial information.

What does the enteric nervous system connect to?

Part of: autonomic nervous system.

Is the enteric nervous system the same in other species?

Leumas holds the same relationship vocabulary for every species it carries, so where another dataset records this structure you can put the two side by side on /compare.