epithalamus

Most dorsal part of the thalamus, comprising the pineal gland and habenular nuclei in most vertebrates. In a few vertebrates, it also includes the parietal eye. (Butler and Hodos, Comparative Vertebrate Neuroanatomy, 2nd ed, 2005, pg. 345-346. Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.

What the epithalamus is

Most dorsal part of the thalamus, comprising the pineal gland and habenular nuclei in most vertebrates. In a few vertebrates, it also includes the parietal eye. (Butler and Hodos, Comparative Vertebrate Neuroanatomy, 2nd ed, 2005, pg. 345-346. The atlas records it as a nerve at the organ scale in the human body.

Where the epithalamus is

It sits within the nervous system. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What the epithalamus connects to

The atlas records 7 typed relationships for it, across 4 kinds of connection. part of dorsal plus ventral thalamus.

Supply and innervation

This dataset asserts no arterial supply, venous drainage or innervation for the epithalamus. 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 ETh and epithalamus. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0001899, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

Questions

Where is the epithalamus?

It sits within the nervous system. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What does the epithalamus connect to?

Part of: dorsal plus ventral thalamus.

Is the epithalamus 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.