Parietal Lobe

Parietal Lobe Functions

Anterior Parietal Lobe

• Processes sensory information
• Localize touch, pressure, pain, and temperature on the opposite side of the body side

Superior Parietal Lobe

• Spatial processing
• Visual guidance of hands, fingers, eyes, and limbs, head
• Responsive to eye movements
• Visual motor guidance for reaching and grabbing objects
• Tactile recognition
• Information on limb position
• Localize objects around us
• Directing movement in space
• Detecting stimuli in space
• Distinguishing left from right ** posterior parietal – prefrontal track connections

Inferior Parietal Lobe

• Spatial cognition, such as reading and arithmetic (borrowing complex numbers)
• Create visual maps
• Read Maps

Anterior Parietal Lobe Problems

• impaired position sense
• high sensory thresholds
• decreased light touch sense
• decreased 2 point touch
• decreased double simultaneous touch
• astereognosia (can’t tell what things are by feeling them)
• anosagnosia (denial of illness)
• anosdiaphoria (indifference to illness)
• autotopagnosia (inability to localize or name body parts – usually on the left side)
• asymbolia for pain (absence of normal reaction to pain)
• asomatognosia (loss of knowledge or sense of one’s own body – usually right side problem)

Posterior Parietal Lobe Problems

Superior

• Balint Syndrome – cannot reach for objects (optic ataxia)
• trouble with spatial processing
• poor visual guidance of hands, fingers, eyes, and limbs, head (hard time catching a ball)
• poor tactile recognition
• poor knowing of limb position
• hard time directing movement in space (trouble flying a kite)
• hard time distinguishing left from right

Inferior

• Dyslexia
• Acalculia

Right Parietal Lobe Problems

• neglect of left side (such as in drawing a clock, left side of drawing a person, left side of words, shaving)
• unaware anything is wrong or a problem is present
• constructional apraxia (impaired at combining blocks to build a design or doing puzzles)
• impaired copying, paper cutting, spatial relations, drawing maps, dressing)

Left Parietal Lobe Problems

• finger agnosia (can’t tell position of finger with eyes closed)
• agraphia (trouble writing)
• Right-Left confusion
• Gertsmann Syndrome
• acalculia
• dyslexia
• errors in grammar
• apraxia
• inability to copy movements or make gestures

Parietal Lobe Abstracts