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Portrait of Cerebrum

Anatomy · Brain & nerves

Cerebrum

The largest part of the brain

Brain · forebrain

The great dome of the forebrain, made of two hemispheres that together account for the large majority of the brain's weight. Its folded grey surface and the white matter beneath it handle conscious thought, voluntary movement, language, memory and the interpretation of the senses. The word is simply Latin for brain, and it is the structure most people picture when they imagine one.

How to spot them

  • ▸The big folded upper mass of the brain, split into two mirror-image halves by a deep midline groove
  • ▸Sits above the tent-like sheet of dura that roofs the little brain at the back
  • ▸Surface is a maze of ridges (gyri) and grooves (sulci); deep inside lie the basal ganglia and the fluid-filled chambers
  • ▸In side view it hides the diencephalon and the top of the brainstem, leaving only the cerebellum poking out behind

What to know

The largest part of the human brain, accounting for roughly four-fifths of its mass

Cerebrum — usually quoted at about 85 per cent of brain weight.

Two mirror-image halves separated by a deep midline fissure into which a sheet of dura called the falx dips

Cerebrum — the longitudinal fissure divides the two hemispheres.

Its left half chiefly serves movement and feeling on the right side of the body, and vice versa

Cerebrum — each hemisphere is mostly contralateral.

The compartment of the brain lying above the tentorium, the dural tent that roofs the hindbrain

Cerebrum — supratentorial structures; the cerebellum lies below the tentorium.

A thick mantle of folded grey matter around a core of white matter, with deep nuclei such as the caudate and putamen buried within

Cerebrum — cortex outside, white matter and basal ganglia within.

Its Latin name means simply 'brain', and its two halves are joined across the midline by about 200 million fibres

Cerebrum — the fibres form the corpus callosum.

Key ideas

  • Folding packs a large surface into a skull-sized volume: the ridges are gyri, the grooves sulci, and the deepest grooves are called fissures.
  • Grey matter (cell bodies) lies mostly at the surface; white matter (myelinated axons) lies beneath it and links regions together.

Quick-fire facts

  • •An adult human brain weighs about 1.3–1.4 kg; the cerebrum makes up the great majority of that, commonly quoted as about 85 per cent
  • •The two hemispheres are separated by the longitudinal fissure and linked mainly by the corpus callosum, with smaller commissures
  • •The human brain is estimated to hold roughly 86 billion neurons, of which about 16 billion are in the folded outer layer of the cerebrum
  • •Deep within lie the basal ganglia, the hippocampus and amygdala, and the lateral ventricles
  • •The falx cerebri, a fold of dura, lies in the longitudinal fissure; the tentorium cerebelli separates the cerebrum from the cerebellum
  • •Each hemisphere is supplied by the anterior, middle and posterior cerebral arteries, which are linked at the circle of Willis
  • •'Cerebrum' is Latin for brain, while 'cerebellum' is its diminutive, 'little brain'
  • •The forebrain also includes the diencephalon (thalamus and hypothalamus), which sits beneath the cerebrum

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