1. Parietal Lobe

2. Superior and Inferior Aspects
BA 5 & 7
Inferior
BA 39 & 40

3. Dorsal and Ventral Streams – Where and What

5. Parietal Lobe Function
Somatosensory (anterior strip)
Visual guidance of movements (superior)
Spatial cognition and quasi-spatial processes like math and reading (inferior)
Selective attention – shifting attention, disengagement, recruitment, and release (cingulate too)
Polymodal integration
Disorders of visuospatial exploration
Anosognosia (unawareness or denial of illness)

7. Defects of visuospatial exploration
Displace visual attention
Inability to perceive more than one stimulus (simultagnosia = simultaneous agnosia)
Defective visual control of movement (optic ataxia)
Inability to follow moving target
Inability to maintain fixation
Inability to voluntarily direct gaze to target (gaze apraxia)
Abnormal visual search

8. Posting performance Balint’s
Normal Optic Ataxia Optic Ataxia

9. Characteristics of Spatial Functions:
modality-independent
visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory stimuli all have spatial location information
perception of location is an abstract concept located in a mental coordinate system
loss of spatial function affects all modalities

10. Category Function Brain area
1) Spatial Attention Attention to left hemispace Right parietal Attention to right hemispace Left parietal
2) Spatial Perception Object Localization R&L occipital and parietal lobes Line orientation Right parietal
3) Spatial Construction Building with blocks; R&L parietal Drawing
4) Spatial mental Mental Rotation Right parietal operations Mental Imagery “posterior”

11. Visual Spatial Disorders
Visual Spatial Construction
difficulty with drawing and assembling 2D or 3D objects.
Assessment
Asked to draw simple figures, such as a flower, square or the face of a clock.
Pencil-and-paper mazes
Block design
Line orientation test
Visual Spatial Disorders
range from basic visual sensory deficits to more abstract visual spatial disability.
Spatial Localization
great difficulty localizing objects in two and three dimensional space. Stereopsis (binocular depth perception) is often impaired.
Topographical Disorientation
Errors in forming spatial maps and using them to find places or solve topographical problems

12. Body Schema Disturbance
Finger Agnosia
patients cannot identify their own fingers or those of another person.
Right-Left Disorientation
Lesions of the left parietal lobe commonly result in right-left disorientation.
Assessment
Autopagnosia Have patient point to own body parts and those on others
Finger Agnosia Have patient close their eyes and indicate which of their fingers has just been touched.

13. Newberg et al (2001)
Used SPECT neuroimaging to scan eight experience Tibetan Buddhist meditators.
Increased
activation
Decreased activation

14. Body schema attenuated thru Meditation

15. Blanke et al (2002)
Stimulation of the right angular gyrus caused reliable out of body experiences.
Further evidence for the role of the parietal cortex in meditating self - other boundaries.

16. Neglect Syndrome (a.k.a Hemi-neglect)
Fails to respond to meaningful stimuli presented to side opposite brain lesion (contralateral space)
Ignores people on one side of room; eats from only one side of plate; draws half of an object, grooms half their body.
But can adapt by learning to turn plate; to turn head; to move objects across visual field.
Not due to motor defects
Occurs in
30-90% Right hemisphere damaged patients (RHD), depending on type of patient (tumor, injury, etc) and type of test
2-15% Left hemisphere damage (LHD)
Right Parietal Stroke – recovery at 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, 9 months

17. Line Bisection Test
(similar to item cancellation, every “e”)

18. Fellini’s Right Parietal Stroke

19. Drawings by Neglect Patients

24. Pseudo-neglect
Which appears darker?

25. Pseudo-neglect
Which appears darker?
Normals overattend to the LVF?

26. Neglect according to Kinsbourne’s hypothesis
Hemispheres normally compete for attentional control.
With damage, intact hemisphere dominates.
A release sign or positive symptom: left neglect involves “over attending” to the right.

27. Two mechanisms for Visual Field processing problem

28. Hemianopia

29. Evidence of implicit recognition
House on fire example
Which house do you prefer?
Unconscious perception of left side of space

30. Maintainence of Syntactical Space

31. Visuoconstructive – e.g., Block Design

32. Visuoconstructive – e.g., Picture Assembly

35. Acalculia: Inability to perform mathematical computations.

36. Apraxia
Difficulty in sequencing & executing movements

37. Limb Apraxia Characterized by movement of the wrong part of the limb
incorrect movement of the correct part, or
correct movements but in the incorrect sequence.
Often assessed by requesting patient to demonstrate the use of a tool or household implement (e.g., "Show me how to cut with scissors").

38. Buccofacial Apraxia
Difficulty performing skilled movements with lips, face, tongue, larynx, and pharynx.
E.g., when asked to blow out a match, suck on a straw or blow a kiss, s/he unable to make the movements or makes uncoordinated movements.
S/he may substitute incorrect movements or perseverate, or substitute verbal expressions for the movement. (e.g., when asked to blow out a match, the patient might say "Blow“).

39. Normal
scan path
Gaze apraxic
scan path

40. Perimeter of a rectangle
Gaze apraxia
Back and forth
between two points
normal
Outlining the
Perimeter of a rectangle
normal

41. Patient with constructional apraxia due to lesion of the right parietal lobe.

42. not localized, often observed in dementia.
Ideational Apraxia
Cannot perform a series of acts although able to perform individual components of the series. May correctly perform each step (say, in making coffee but out of order, such as turning coffee maker on first).
Loss of conceptual knowledge associated with objects and overall goal of the activity sequence.
not localized, often observed in dementia.

43. Movement Disorders

44. Movement Disorders (HD, PD)