Revisiting the cortical system for peripheral reaching at the parieto-occipital junction

Optic ataxia (OA) is a neurological disorder that is characterised by misreaching to targets in the visual periphery. The anatomy of OA thus provides important information for the neural representation of visually guided reaching in humans. In 2005 a lesion mapping analysis of OA localised the critical lesion site at the parieto-occipital junction (POJ) (Karnath & Perenin, 2005). This work was accompanied by the discovery of a peripheral reaching module at the POJ in an fMRI study (Prado et al., 2005). The ostensible overlap between the territory typically affected in patients with OA and the findings of Prado et al. (2005) had a tremendous influence on the search for a cortical peripheral reaching module. However, a close inspection of the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study revealed that a comparison between reaching towards visible targets in the peripheral visual field and reaching to visible targets in the central visual field--which is the key aspect in clinical examinations of OA--was not conducted. Moreover, whereas main effects of reaching overlapped with the OA lesion site, specific interaction effects did not overlap. We performed a direct comparison between reaching to visible peripheral targets and reaching to visible central targets to address the inconsistencies between the aforementioned studies. Our analysis shows that Prado et al.'s study cannot be taken as evidence for a delineated module for peripheral reaching. In contrast to Prado et al. we found a combined system of POJ, IPS and SPL areas--the posterior human 7A, mIPS, V6A and the posterior IPS--with increased signals during reaching to peripheral targets.