Pituitary gland Pituitary gland In vertebrate anatomy, the pituitary gland, or hypophysis, is an endocrine gland about the size of a pea and weighing in humans. It is a protrusion off the bottom of the hypothalamus at the base of the brain. The hypophysis rests upon the hypophysial fossa of the sphenoid bone in the center of the middle cranial fossa and is surrounded by a small bony cavity (sella turcica) covered by a dural fold (diaphragma sellae). The anterior pituitary (or adenohypophysis) is a lobe of the gland that regulates several physiological processes (including stress, growth, reproduction, and lactation). The intermediate
Segmentation in the human nervous system each segment of the body. In fact, most evolutionary evidences point to the postulate that segmentation is an independent evolutionary event that arose multiple times and that the cellular and molecular pathways of segmentation might show differences in different contexts due to this fact. The nervous system segmentation confers several developmental advantages to the vertebrate body as humans possess a body plan that is bilaterally segmented at the nervous system level. The segmentation is involved at all levels of the human nervous system with increasing level of complexity in the innervation from the brain to limbs. The presence of conserved