Multisensory and sensorimotor maps

The parietal lobe plays a major role in sensorimotor integration and action. Recent neuroimaging studies have revealed more than 40 retinotopic areas distributed across five visual streams in the human brain, two of which enter the parietal lobe. A series of retinotopic areas occupy the length of the intraparietal sulcus and continue into the postcentral sulcus. On the medial wall, retinotopy extends across the parieto-occipital sulcus into the precuneus and reaches the cingulate sulcus. Full-body tactile stimulation revealed a multisensory homunculus lying along the postcentral sulcus just posterior to primary somatosensory cortical areas and overlapping with the anteriormost retinotopic maps. These topologically organized higher-level maps lay the foundation for actions in peripersonal space (e.g., reaching and grasping) as well as navigation through space. A preliminary yet comprehensive multilayer functional atlas was constructed to specify the relative locations of cortical unisensory, multisensory, and action representations. We expect that those areal and functional definitions will be refined by future studies using more sophisticated stimuli and tasks tailored to regions with different specificity. The long-term goal is to construct an online surface-based atlas containing layered maps of multiple modalities that can be used as a reference to understand the functions and disorders of the parietal lobe.