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.