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
Metastability in the brain turning-on and -off of selected parts of the brain in response to environmental cues and conscious tasks. A developing field in coordination dynamics involves the theory of social coordination, which attempts to relate the DC to normal human development of complex social cues following certain patterns of interaction. This work is aimed at understanding how human social interaction is mediated by metastability of neural networks. fMRI and EEG are particularly useful in mapping thalamocortical response to social cues in experimental studies. A new theory called the phi complex has been developed by J. A. Scott Kelso and fellow researchers at