Red nucleus

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Brain: Red nucleus
Transverse section through the midbrain showing the location of the red nuclei. The superior colliculi are at the top of image and the cerebral peduncles at the bottom of image – both in section.
Latin	nucleus ruber
Gray's	subject #188 802
NeuroNames	hier-496
MeSH	Red+Nucleus
NeuroLex ID	birnlex_1478

The red nucleus is a structure in the rostral midbrain involved in motor coordination. It comprises a caudal magnocellular and a rostral parvocellular part.

Function

In animals without a significant corticospinal tract, gait is mainly controlled by the red nucleus.

In humans, the red nucleus may control the muscles of the shoulder and upper arm, via projections of its magnocellular part. However, in humans, where the corticospinal tract is dominant, the rubrospinal tract may be considered to be vestigial. Therefore, here the red nucleus is less important in motor functions than in many other mammals. However, the crawling of babies is controlled by the red nucleus, as is arm-swinging in normal walking. In humans the red nucleus has sparse control over hands, as the rubrospinal tract is more involved in large muscle movement such as that for arms and legs; fine control of the fingers is not modified by the functioning of the red nucleus (rather it relies on the corticospinal tract). The majority of red nucleus axons do not project to the spinal cord, but instead (via its parvocellular part) relay information from the motor cortex to the cerebellum through the inferior olivary complex- an important relay center in the medulla.

Input and output

The red nucleus receives many inputs from the contralateral cerebellum (interpositus nucleus and lateral cerebellar nucleus) and an input from the ipsilateral motor cortex.

It sends efferent axons (the rubrospinal projection) to the contralateral half of the rhombencephalic reticular formation and spinal cord. These efferent axons cross just ventral to the nucleus and descend through the midbrain to the spinal cord, where the rubrospinal tract which they make up runs ventral to the lateral corticospinal tract in the lateral funiculus. Second bundle of fibers continues ipsilaterally through the medial tegmental field towards inferior olive.

Meaning of name

Its name derives from its color in fresh dissections, due to a rich vascularization.

See also

• List of regions in the human brain

Additional images

Schematic representation of the chief ganglionic categories (I to V).	Deep dissection of brain-stem. Ventral view.	Transverse section through mid-brain.	Transverse section of mid-brain at level of superior colliculi.
Coronal section of brain immediately in front of pons.	Human brain frontal (coronal) section

External links

• Diagram at Stanford University
• BrainMaps at UCDavis Red nucleus

• Diagram at uni-tuebingen.de

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