sympathetic nervous system

The sympathetic nervous system is one of the two divisions of the vertebrate autonomic nervous system (the other being the parasympathetic nervous system). The sympathetic preganglionic neurons have their cell bodies in the thoracic and lumbar regions of the spinal cord and connect to the paravertebral chain of sympathetic ganglia. Innervate heart and blood vessels, sweat glands, viscera and the adrenal medulla. Most sympathetic neurons, but not all, use noradrenaline as a post-ganglionic neurotransmitter [GO]. Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.

What the sympathetic nervous system is

The sympathetic nervous system is one of the two divisions of the vertebrate autonomic nervous system (the other being the parasympathetic nervous system). The sympathetic preganglionic neurons have their cell bodies in the thoracic and lumbar regions of the spinal cord and connect to the paravertebral chain of sympathetic ganglia. Innervate heart and blood vessels, sweat glands, viscera and the adrenal medulla. Most sympathetic neurons, but not all, use noradrenaline as a post-ganglionic neurotransmitter [GO]. The atlas records it as a system at the system scale in the human body.

Where the sympathetic nervous system is

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

What the sympathetic nervous system connects to

The atlas records 15 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 sympathetic 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 pars sympathica divisionis autonomici systematis nervosi, sympathetic nervous system and sympathetic part of autonomic division of nervous system. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0000013, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

• Part of: autonomic nervous system.
• A kind of: organ system subdivision.
• Innervates: superior tarsal muscle.
• contains: cervical sympathetic nerve trunk, lumbar sympathetic nerve trunk, sacral sympathetic nerve trunk, splanchnic nerve, sympathetic ganglion and sympathetic nerve, and 3 more.
• contributes to morphology of: autonomic nervous system, splanchnic nerve and sympathetic ganglion.

Questions

Where is the sympathetic nervous system?

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

What does the sympathetic nervous system connect to?

Part of: autonomic nervous system.

Is the sympathetic 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.