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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pineal gland

Pineal \Pi"ne*al\, a. [L. pinea the cone of a pine, from pineus of the pine, from pinus a pine: cf. F. pin['e]ale.] Of or pertaining to a pine cone; resembling a pine cone.

Pineal gland (Anat.), a glandlike body in the roof of the third ventricle of the vertebrate brain; -- called also pineal body, epiphysis, conarium. In some animals it is connected with a rudimentary eye, the so-called pineal eye, and in other animals it is supposed to be the remnant of a dorsal median eye.

Wiktionary
pineal gland

n. (context anatomy English) A small, pinecone-shaped endocrine gland found near the centre of the brain that produces melatonin.

WordNet
pineal gland

n. a small endocrine gland in the brain; situated beneath the back part of the corpus callosum; secretes melatonin [syn: pineal body, epiphysis cerebri, epiphysis]

Wikipedia
Pineal gland

The pineal gland, also known as the pineal body, conarium or epiphysis cerebri, is a small endocrine gland in the vertebrate brain. It produces melatonin, a serotonin derived hormone, which affects the modulation of sleep patterns in both seasonal and circadian rhythms. Its shape resembles a tiny pine cone (hence its name), and it 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.

Nearly all vertebrate species possess a pineal gland. The most important exception is the hagfish, which is often thought of as the most primitive extant vertebrate. Even in the hagfish, however, there may be a "pineal equivalent" structure in the dorsal diencephalon. The lancelet Branchiostoma lanceolatum, the nearest existing relative to vertebrates, also lacks a recognizable pineal gland. The lamprey (considered almost as primitive as the hagfish), however, does possess one. A few more developed vertebrates, including the alligator, lack pineal glands because they have been lost over the course of evolution.

The results of various scientific research in evolutionary biology, comparative neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, have explained the phylogeny of the pineal gland in different vertebrate species. From the point of view of biological evolution, the pineal gland represents a kind of atrophied photoreceptor. In the epithalamus of some species of amphibians and reptiles, it is linked to a vestigial organ, known as the parietal eye which is also called the third eye.

René Descartes believed the pineal gland to be the "principal seat of the soul" (a mystical concept). Academic philosophy among his contemporaries considered the pineal gland as a neuroanatomical structure without special metaphysical qualities; science studied it as one endocrine gland among many. However, the pineal gland continues to have an exalted status in the realm of pseudoscience.

Usage examples of "pineal gland".

As our heart is in the protected center of our chest, so the pineal gland is in the very most protected center of our heads.

Their activation would project extremely fine effects, by means of fluid jets directed against the pineal gland.

All the way up to the large organismic issues, such as brain-wave rhythms and their relationship to the heart and other organs, or the pineal gland's ever-decreasing secretions of melatonin, a hormone that seemed to regulate many aspects of aging.

All the way up to the large organismic issues, such as brain-wave rhythms and their relationship to the heart and other organs, or the pineal gland’.

Two that continue to arouse a great deal of attention involve the thymus organ and the pineal gland.

McKie would be jerked to full inner awareness now, his pineal gland ignited by the long-distance contact.

He might have picked up a letter opener and gone after my pineal gland.

They were not comfortable in these uplands of the mind, but the Timewyrm had forced them by biology, changed the chemical balance of the Doctor's brain until they had to come here or perish, into the arena that Ace had encountered on her journey into this mind, the circus of the pineal gland.

People with guns aren't ready for any kind of resistance and it phases them, but I could be making a mistake with this man and he could get rid of his angst by going for his gun and putting a bullet right through my own pineal gland, louche.

He figured that we had degenerated from the prime stock and that certain organs such as the vermiform appendix, the pineal gland and the dead areas of the brain must once have had a useful function.

A little surgery on the pineal gland might have turned the Templars into Hospitalers.

Bharadwaj awaited Rebecca Howell's command, as ordered, before firing the complex and precise charge through the pineal gland that he believed would restore independent life function and consciousness - to the preserved flesh.

Bharadwaj awaited Rebecca Howell's command, as ordered, before firing the complex and precise charge through the pineal gland that he believed would restore independent life-function-and consciousness-to the preserved flesh.

Bharadwaj awaited Rebecca Howell's command, as ordered, before firing the complex and precise charge through the pineal gland that he believed would restore independent life –.