Posterior parietal cortex

Role• “The parietal lobe forms about 20% of the human cerebral

cortex and is divided into two major regions, the somatosensory cortex and the posterior parietal cortex.”(2)

• “A primary function of posterior parietal cortex is the integration of visuospatial and somatosensory information to shape an appropriate motor response.” (1)

• “…attention is one of the cognitive functions that is traditionally associated with posterior parietal regions…”(3)

• The posterior parietal cortex has long been known to be crucial for attention during perception and mental representation of location, but it was rarely, if ever, implicated in memory retrieval. <…> The advent of functional neuroimaging, however, showed clearly that the posterior parietal cortex is often activated during memory retrieval.(3)

“…parietal cortex serves a crucial role in transforming sensory input into motor output.”(2)

Limitations or what’s next• Surface area of this region is 20 times larger in humans than in

macaque monkeys.(2)

• Although much less is known about human parietal cortex than homologous monkey cortex, recent studies, employing neuroimaging and neuropsychological methods, have begun to elucidate increasingly fine-grained functional and structural distinctions. (2)

• Functional imaging work has become increasingly sophisticated over the past few years and the full power of this method is yet to be realized in the exploration of human parietal cortex.(2)

Studies

• E-bookhttp://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnint.2013.00035/full

Bibliography• 1. http://jn.physiology.org/content/95/1/205• 2.http://home.gwu.edu/~shom/ACL/pubs/ParietalCON.pdf• 3.

http://cabezalab.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Cabeza08_AtoM_NatureRevNeurosci.pdf