Mental foramen
anatomical landmark on human mandible
The mental foramen is one of two foramina (openings) located on the anterior surface of the mandible. It is part of the mandibular canal. It transmits the terminal branches of the inferior alveolar nerve and the mental vessels.
Structure
The mental foramen is located on the anterior surface of the mandible. It is directly below the commisure of the lips, and the tendon of depressor labii inferioris muscle. It is at the end of the mandibular canal, which begins at the mandibular foramen on the posterior surface of the mandible. It transmits the terminal branches of the inferior alveolar nerve (the mental nerve), the mental artery, and the mental vein.
Variation
The mental foramen descends slightly in toothless individuals.
The mental foramen is in line with the longitudinal axis of the second premolar in 63% of people. It generally lies at the level of the vestibular fornix and about a finger's breadth above the inferior border of the mandible.
“Mental foramen” enters the record as anatomical landmark on human mandible. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mental, foramen and anatomical can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q833871. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mental foramen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.