parasympathetic nervous system

The parasympathetic nervous system is one of the two divisions of the vertebrate autonomic nervous system. Parasympathetic nerves emerge cranially as pre ganglionic fibers from oculomotor, facial, glossopharyngeal and vagus and from the sacral region of the spinal cord. Most neurons are cholinergic and responses are mediated by muscarinic receptors. The parasympathetic system innervates, for example: salivary glands, thoracic and abdominal viscera, bladder and genitalia[GO]. Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.

What the parasympathetic nervous system is

The parasympathetic nervous system is one of the two divisions of the vertebrate autonomic nervous system. Parasympathetic nerves emerge cranially as pre ganglionic fibers from oculomotor, facial, glossopharyngeal and vagus and from the sacral region of the spinal cord. Most neurons are cholinergic and responses are mediated by muscarinic receptors. The parasympathetic system innervates, for example: salivary glands, thoracic and abdominal viscera, bladder and genitalia[GO]. The atlas records it as a system at the system scale in the human body.

Where the parasympathetic nervous system is

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

What the parasympathetic nervous system connects to

The atlas records 12 typed relationships for it, across 5 kinds of connection. part of autonomic nervous system.

Supply and innervation

This dataset asserts no arterial supply, venous drainage or innervation for the parasympathetic 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 - parasympathetic, parasympathetic part of autonomic division of nervous system and pars parasympathica divisionis autonomici systematis nervosi. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0000011, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

• Part of: autonomic nervous system.
• A kind of: anatomical structure and organ system subdivision.
• contains: cardiac ganglion, parasympathetic ganglion, parasympathetic nerve, pelvic splanchnic nerve, sublingual ganglion and submandibular ganglion.
• contributes to morphology of: autonomic nervous system and parasympathetic ganglion.
• develops into: pterygopalatine ganglion.

Questions

Where is the parasympathetic nervous system?

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

What does the parasympathetic nervous system connect to?

Part of: autonomic nervous system.

Is the parasympathetic 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.