scholarly journals The Visuospatial and Sensorimotor Functions of Posterior Parietal Cortex in Drawing Tasks: A Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuwei Bai ◽  
Wenyan Liu ◽  
Yangtai Guan

Drawing is a comprehensive skill that primarily involves visuospatial processing, eye-hand coordination, and other higher-order cognitive functions. Various drawing tasks are widely used to assess brain function. The neuropsychological basis of drawing is extremely sophisticated. Previous work has addressed the critical role of the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) in drawing, but the specific functions of the PPC in drawing remain unclear. Functional magnetic resonance imaging and electrophysiological studies found that drawing activates the PPC. Lesion-symptom mapping studies have shown an association between PPC injury and drawing deficits in patients with global and focal cerebral pathology. These findings depicted a core framework of the fronto-parietal network in drawing tasks. Here, we review neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies applying drawing paradigms and discuss the specific functions of the PPC in visuospatial and sensorimotor aspects. Ultimately, we proposed a hypothetical model based on the dorsal stream. It demonstrates the organization of a PPC-centered network for drawing and provides systematic insights into drawing for future neuropsychological research.

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 267-280
Author(s):  
Rossella Breveglieri ◽  
Annalisa Bosco ◽  
Sara Borgomaneri ◽  
Alessia Tessari ◽  
Claudio Galletti ◽  
...  

Abstract Accumulating evidence supports the view that the medial part of the posterior parietal cortex (mPPC) is involved in the planning of reaching, but while plenty of studies investigated reaching performed toward different directions, only a few studied different depths. Here, we investigated the causal role of mPPC (putatively, human area V6A–hV6A) in encoding depth and direction of reaching. Specifically, we applied single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the left hV6A at different time points while 15 participants were planning immediate, visually guided reaching by using different eye-hand configurations. We found that TMS delivered over hV6A 200 ms after the Go signal affected the encoding of the depth of reaching by decreasing the accuracy of movements toward targets located farther with respect to the gazed position, but only when they were also far from the body. The effectiveness of both retinotopic (farther with respect to the gaze) and spatial position (far from the body) is in agreement with the presence in the monkey V6A of neurons employing either retinotopic, spatial, or mixed reference frames during reach plan. This work provides the first causal evidence of the critical role of hV6A in the planning of visually guided reaching movements in depth.


2005 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 1372-1384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis Schluppeck ◽  
Paul Glimcher ◽  
David J. Heeger

Posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is thought to play a critical role in decision making, sensory attention, motor intention, and/or working memory. Research on the PPC in non-human primates has focused on the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). Neurons in LIP respond after the onset of visual targets, just before saccades to those targets, and during the delay period in between. To study the function of posterior parietal cortex in humans, it will be crucial to have a routine and reliable method for localizing specific parietal areas in individual subjects. Here, we show that human PPC contains at least two topographically organized regions, which are candidates for the human homologue of LIP. We mapped the topographic organization of human PPC for delayed (memory guided) saccades using fMRI. Subjects were instructed to fixate centrally while a peripheral target was briefly presented. After a further 3-s delay, subjects made a saccade to the remembered target location followed by a saccade back to fixation and a 1-s inter-trial interval. Targets appeared at successive locations “around the clock” (same eccentricity, ≈30° angular steps), to produce a traveling wave of activity in areas that are topographically organized. PPC exhibited topographic organization for delayed saccades. We defined two areas in each hemisphere that contained topographic maps of the contra-lateral visual field. These two areas were immediately rostral to V7 as defined by standard retinotopic mapping. The two areas were separated from each other and from V7 by reversals in visual field orientation. However, we leave open the possibility that these two areas will be further subdivided in future studies. Our results demonstrate that topographic maps tile the cortex continuously from V1 well into PPC.


2000 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 701-709 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN G. LOMBER ◽  
BERTRAM R. PAYNE

The purpose of the present study was to examine the contributions made by cat posterior parietal cortex to the analyses of the relative position of objects in visual space. Two cats were trained on a landmark task in which they learned to report the position of a landmark object relative to a right or left food-reward chamber. Subsequently, three pairs of cooling loops were implanted bilaterally in contact with visuoparietal cortices forming the crown of the middle suprasylvian gyrus (MSg; architectonic area 7) and the banks of the posterior-middle suprasylvian sulcus (pMS sulcal cortex) and in contact with the ventral-posterior suprasylvian (vPS) region of visuotemporal cortex. Bilateral deactivation of pMS sulcal cortex resulted in a profound impairment for all six tested positions of the landmark, yet bilateral deactivation of neither area 7 nor vPS cortex yielded any deficits. In control tasks (visual orienting and object discrimination), there was no evidence for any degree of attentional blindness or impairment of form discrimination during bilateral deactivation of pMS cortex. Therefore, we conclude that bilateral cooling of pMS cortex, but neither area 7 nor vPS cortex, induces a specific deficit in spatial localization as examined with the landmark task. These observations have significant bearing on our understanding of visuospatial processing in cat, monkey, and human cortices.


2015 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 170-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Gertz ◽  
Katja Fiehler

Previous research on reach planning in humans has implicated a frontoparietal network, including the precuneus (PCu), a putative human homolog of the monkey parietal reach region (PRR), and the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd). Using a pro-/anti-reach task, electrophysiological studies in monkeys have demonstrated that the movement goal rather than the location of the visual cue is encoded in PRR and PMd. However, if only the effector but not the movement goal is specified (underspecified condition), the PRR and PMd have been shown to represent all potential movement goals. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we investigated whether the human PCu and PMd likewise encode the movement goal, and whether these reach-related areas also engage in situations with underspecified compared with specified movement goals. By using a pro-/anti-reach task, we spatially dissociated the location of the visual cue from the location of the movement goal. In the specified conditions, pro- and anti-reaches activated similar parietal and premotor areas. In the PCu contralateral to the moving arm, we found directionally selective activation fixed to the movement goal. In the underspecified conditions, we observed activation in reach-related areas of the posterior parietal cortex, including PCu. However, the activation was substantially weaker in parietal areas and lacking in PMd. Our results suggest that human PCu encodes the movement goal rather than the location of the visual cue if the movement goal is specified and even engages in situations when only the visual cue but not the movement goal is defined.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Summerfield ◽  
Fabrice Luyckx ◽  
Hannah Sheahan

We propose a theory of structure learning in the primate brain. We argue that the parietal cortex is critical for learning about relations among the objects and categories that populate a visual scene. We suggest that current deep learning models exhibit poor global scene understanding because they fail to perform the relational inferences that occur in the primate dorsal stream. We review studies of neural coding in primate posterior parietal cortex (PPC), drawing the conclusion that this brain area represents potentially high-dimensional inputs on a low-dimensional manifold that encodes relative the position of objects or features in physical space, and relations among entities an abstract conceptual space. We argue that this low-dimension code supports generalisation of relational information, even in nonspatial domains. Finally, we propose that structure learning is grounded in the actions that primates take when they reach for objects or fixate them with their eyes. We sketch a model of how this might occur in neural circuits.


2003 ◽  
Vol 90 (4) ◽  
pp. 2460-2464 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. R. Dickinson ◽  
J. L. Calton ◽  
L. H. Snyder

We present evidence that neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) of monkey posterior parietal cortex (PPC) are activated by the instruction to make an eye movement, even in the complete absence of a spatial target. This study employed a visually guided motor task that dissociated the type of movement to make (saccade or reach) from the location where the movement was to be made. Using this task, animals were instructed to prepare a specific type of movement prior to knowing the spatial location of the movement target. We found that 25% of the LIP neurons recorded in two animals were activated significantly more by the instruction to prepare a saccade than by the instruction to prepare a reach. This finding indicates that LIP is involved in more than merely spatial attention and provides further evidence for nonspatial effector-specific signal processing in the dorsal stream.


2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Tseng ◽  
Cassidy Sterling ◽  
Adam Cooper ◽  
Bruce Bridgeman ◽  
Neil G. Muggleton ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Imogen M Kruse

The near-miss effect in gambling behaviour occurs when an outcome which is close to a win outcome invigorates gambling behaviour notwithstanding lack of associated reward. In this paper I postulate that the processing of concepts which are deemed controllable is rooted in neurological machinery located in the posterior parietal cortex specialised for the processing of objects which are immediately actionable or controllable because they are within reach. I theorise that the use of a common machinery facilitates spatial influence on the perception of concepts such that the win outcome which is 'almost complete' is perceived as being 'almost within reach'. The perceived realisability of the win increases subjective reward probability and the associated expected action value which impacts decision-making and behaviour. This novel hypothesis is the first to offer a neurological model which can comprehensively explain many empirical findings associated with the near-miss effect as well as other gambling phenomena such as the ‘illusion of control’. Furthermore, when extended to other compulsive behaviours such as drug addiction, the model can offer an explanation for continued drug-seeking following devaluation and for the increase in cravings in response to perceived opportunity to self-administer, neither of which can be explained by simple reinforcement models alone. This paper therefore provides an innovative and unifying perspective for the study and treatment of behavioural and substance addictions.


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