[2] The lingual gyrus of the occipital lobe lies between the calcarine sulcus and the posterior part of the collateral sulcus; behind, it reaches the occipital pole; in front, it is continued on to the tentorial surface of the temporal lobe, and joins the parahippocampal gyrus.

Visual memory dysfunction and visuo-limbic disconnection have been shown in cases where the lingual gyrus has been damaged (due to stroke or other traumatic brain injuries).

[citation needed] Further, impaired visual memory is related to either damage to the region or disconnections between the gyrus and other brain structures.

[6] It has also been shown that activation of the ventral occipitotemporal cortex, including the lingual gyrus, is related to the processing of visual information about parts of human faces.

[7] Furthermore, the left lingual gyrus activates during memorizing and maintaining images of human faces in working memory.

[11] The lingual gyrus is a structure in the visual cortex that plays an important role in the identification and recognition of words.

[12] Studies have implicated the lingual gyrus as being involved in modulating visual stimuli (especially letters) but not whether or not the stimulus was a word.

When subjects were tasked with pairing abstract nouns with either visual imagery or sentence generation, many areas in the occipital lobe – namely the lingual gyrus – showed task-selective memory effects.

Studies have shown elevated signals in the lingual gyrus when subjects were tasked with retrieval of facts while problem solving.