18 Facts About Pineal gland

Pineal gland, conarium, or epiphysis cerebri, is a small endocrine gland in the brain of most vertebrates.

The pineal gland produces melatonin, a serotonin-derived hormone which modulates sleep patterns in both circadian and seasonal cycles.

The pineal gland is located in the epithalamus, near the center of the brain, between the two hemispheres, tucked in a groove where the two halves of the thalamus join.

The pineal gland is one of the neuroendocrine secretory circumventricular organs in which capillaries are mostly permeable to solutes in the blood.

Pineal gland is a midline brain structure that is unpaired.

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The Pineal gland is reddish-gray and about the size of a grain of rice in humans.

Unlike most of the mammalian brain, the pineal gland is not isolated from the body by the blood–brain barrier system; it has profuse blood flow, second only to the kidney, supplied from the choroidal branches of the posterior cerebral artery.

Pineal gland receives a sympathetic innervation from the superior cervical ganglion.

Pineal gland contains receptors for the regulatory neuropeptide, endothelin-1, which, when injected in picomolar quantities into the lateral cerebral ventricle, causes a calcium-mediated increase in pineal glucose metabolism.

Pineal gland-derived melatonin mediates its action on the bone cells through MT2 receptors.

Calcification of the pineal gland is typical in young adults, and has been observed in children as young as two years of age.

Pineal gland calcification is detrimental to its ability to synthesize melatonin and scientific literature presents inconclusive findings on whether it causes sleep problems.

Calcification of the pineal gland is associated with corpora arenacea, known as "brain sand".

The parietal eye and the pineal gland of living tetrapods are probably the descendants of the left and right parts of this organ, respectively.

The loss of parietal eyes in many living tetrapods is supported by developmental formation of a paired structure that subsequently fuses into a single pineal gland in developing embryos of turtles, snakes, birds, and mammals.

Pineal gland cytostructure seems to have evolutionary similarities to the retinal cells of the lateral eyes.

Rick Strassman, an author and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, has theorised that the human pineal gland is capable of producing the hallucinogen N, N-Dimethyltryptamine under certain circumstances.

Pineal gland was originally believed to be a "vestigial remnant" of a larger organ.