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Henry Gray (1825–1861). Anatomy of the Human Body. 1918.

pages 746

the horns of the future lateral ventricle; the hinder end of the vesicle is carried downward and forward and forms the inferior horn; the posterior horn is produced somewhat later, in association with the backward growth of the occipital lobe of the hemisphere. The roof-plate of the primitive fore-brain remains thin and of an epithelial character; it is invaginated into the lateral ventricle along the medial wall of the hemisphere. This invagination constitutes the choroidal fissure, and extends from the interventricular foramen to the posterior end of the vesicle. Mesodermal tissue, continuous with that of the primitive falx cerebri, and carrying bloodvessels with it, spreads between the two layers of the invaginated fold and forms the rudiment of the tela choroidea; the margins of the tela become highly vascular and form the choroid plexuses which for some months almost completely fill the ventricular cavities; the tela at the same time invaginates the epithelial roof of the diencephalon to form the choroid plexuses of the third ventricle. By the downward and forward growth of the posterior end of the vesicle to form the temporal lobe the choroidal fissure finally reaches from the interventricular foramen to the extremity of the inferior horn of the ventricle.


FIG. 657– Median sagittal section of brain of human embryo of four months. (Marchand.) (See enlarged image)
  Parallel with but above and in front of the choroidal fissure the medial wall of the cerebral vesicle becomes folded outward and gives rise to the hippocampal fissure on the medial surface and to a corresponding elevation, the hippocampus, within the ventricular cavity. The gray or ganglionic covering of the wall of the vesicle ends at the inferior margin of the fissure is a thickened edge; beneath this the marginal or reticular layer (future white substance) is exposed and its lower thinned edge is continuous with the epithelial invagination covering the choroid plexus (Fig. 656). As a result of the later downward and forward growth of the temporal lobe the hippocampal fissure and the parts associated with it extend from the interventricular foramen to the end of the inferior horn of the ventricle. The thickened edge of gray substance becomes the gyrus dentatus, the fasciola cinerea and the supra- and subcallosal gyri, while the free edge of the white substance forms the fimbria hippocampi and the body and crus of the fornix. The corpus callosum is developed within the arch of the hippocampal fissure, and the upper part of the fissure forms, in the adult brain, the callosal fissure on the medial surface of the hemisphere.

The Commissures (Fig. 657).—The development of the posterior commissure has already been referred to (page 743). The great commissures of the hemispheres,