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The function of the parietal lobe has been a topic of great interest, its study stimulated by the profound and intriguing perceptual and motor deficits resulting from parietal lobe lesions in humans. The specific role of the parietal cortex has always been a matter of great controversy, with different laboratories emphasizing seemingly exclusive interpretations of parietal lobe functions arranged around a line separating sensory input and motor output, both possibly modulated by attention. Recent work based on awake, behaving monkeys and the study of patients with parietal lobe lesions have unmasked the sensory versus motor dichotomy of parietal lobe function as being both arbitrary and simplistic. The present book conveys the current view of parietal lobe functions, centering around the idea that parietal lobe areas act as true sensorimotor interfaces contributing to the sensory guidance of movement and to the perception of space by offering non-sensory, mental representations of space suited to the needs of the specific task. It is largely based on a conference on parietal lobe functions held in Tiibingen, Germany, in the early summer of 1995. The major goal of this meeting was to further the exchange between neurophysiologists and neuropsychologists interested in this part of the brain. This book aims to cast the productive discussions of this conference into a state-of-the-art overview of present thinking on the role of the parietal lobes and their specific contributions to eye movements, reaching and grasping, attention, perception, and the representation of space.
List of contents
Functional Anatomy of the Parietal Lobe and its Connections.- Neglect, Extinction, and the Cortical Streams of Visual Processing.- Parietal Lobe and the Visual Control of Movement.- Input from the Cerebellum and Motor Cortical Areas to the Parietal Association Cortex.- Direct Bilateral Cortical Projections to the Vestibular Complex in Macaque Monkey.- Superior Parietal Lobule Involvement in the Representation of Visual Space: a PET Review.- Eye Movements and Beyond.- Multiple Parietal "Eye Fields": Insights from Electrical Microstimulation.- Area LIP and the Population Vector: Single and Double Targets.- Posterior Parietal Cortex Control of Saccades in Humans.- Specific Parietal Lobe Contribution to Spatial Constancy Across Saccades.- MST Neurons are Activated by Smooth Pursuit of Imaginary Targets.- A Cortically Mediated Visual Stabilization Mechanism with Ultrashort Latency in Primates.- Eye Movement Control in Spatial and Object-Based Neglect.- Reaching and Grasping.- From Vision to Movement: Cortico-Cortical Connections and Combinatorial Properties of Reaching-Related Neurons in Parietal Areas V6 and V6A.- Parietal Visual Neurons Coding Three-Dimensional Characteristics of Objects and Their Relation to Hand Action.- A Parietal-Frontal Circuit for Hand Grasping Movements in the Monkey: Evidence from Reversible Inactivation Experiments.- Reaching, Grasping, and Bimanual Coordination with Special Reference to the Posterior Parietal Cortex.- Optic Ataxia and Unilateral Neglect: Clinical Evidence for Dissociable Spatial Functions in Posterior Parietal Cortex.- Distinguishing Sensory and Motor Deficits After Parietal Damage: An Evaluation of Response Selection Biases in Unilateral Neglect.- On the Role of the Egocentric and the Allocentric Frame of Reference in theControl of Arm Movements.- Attention and Perception.- Attentional Modulation of Visual Signal Processing in the Parietal Cortex.- Attentional Modulation of Visual Receptive Fields in the Posterior Parietal Cortex of the Behaving Macaque.- Object-Based Attention in Visual Neglect: Conceptual and Empirical Distinctions.- Extinction as a Paradigm Measure of Attentional Bias and Restricted Capacity Following Brain Injury.- Is Extinction Following Parietal Damage an Interhemispheric Disconnection Phenomenon?.- Action and Perception in the Visual Periphery.- Representation of Space.- The Spatial Features of Unilateral Neglect.- Neural Encoding of Space Egocentric Coordinates?.- Lesion in a Basis Function Model of Parietal Cortex: Comparison with Hemineglect.- Neuronal Coding of Visual Space in the Posterior Parietal Cortex.- Modulation of the Neglect Syndrome by Sensory Stimulation.- Ipsilesional Displacement of Egocentric Midline in Neglect Patients with, but Not in Those Without, Extensive Right Parietal Damage.- Analysis of Self-Motion by Parietal Neurons.- The Representation of Movement in Near Extra-Personal Space in the Macaque Ventral Intraparietal Area (VIP).
About the author
Professor Dr. Hans-Otto Karnath lehrt an der Universität Tübingen.
