The TINS Lecture The parietal association cortex in depth perception and visual control of hand action

• Published in: Trends in neurosciences (Regular ed.) Vol. 20; no. 8; pp. 350 - 357
• Main Authors: Sakata, H., Taira, M., Kusunoki, M., Murata, A., Tanaka, Y.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01-08-1997; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: 3-D representation; 3-D shape; Animals; axis-orientation; binocular disparity; Biological and medical sciences; Depth Perception - physiology; depth-movement; depth-rotation; dorsal visual; ego-centric distance; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects. Models. Methods; Hand - physiology; Humans; manipulation; Parietal Lobe - physiology; Psychomotor Performance - physiology; Space life sciences; surface-orientationSteropsis; Vertebrates: nervous system and sense organs; visual fixation neuron; dorsal visual; binocular disparity; depth-movement; 3-D shape; ego-centric distance; surface-orientationSteropsis; axis-orientation; 3-D representation; depth-rotation; manipulation; visual fixation neuron; Manual task; Visual cortex; Visual pathway; Vision; Central nervous system; Parietal cortex; Discharge pattern; Review; Association cortex; Neural integration; Visuomotor control; Brain (vertebrata)
• ISSN: 0166-2236; 1878-108X
• DOI: 10.1016/S0166-2236(97)01067-9

At the 1996 Annual Meeting of the European Neuroscience Association, held in Strasbourg, the plenary lecture by Hideo Tanaka was sponsored by
TINS. The following article is adapted from this lecture.
Recent neurophysiological studies in alert monkeys have revealed that the parietal association cortex plays a crucial role in depth perception and visually guided hand movement. The following five classes of parietal neurons covering various aspects of these functions have been identified: (1) depth-selective visual-fixation (VF) neurons of the inferior parietal lobule (IPL), representing egocentric distance; (2) depth-movement sensitive (DMS) neurons of V5A and the ventral intraparietal (VIP) area representing direction of linear movement in 3-D space; (3) depth- rotation-sensitive (RS) neurons of V5A and the posterior parietal (PP) area representing direction of rotary movement in space; (4) visually responsive manipulation-related neurons (visual-dominant or visual-and-motor type) of the anterior intraparietal (AIP) area, representing 3-D shape or orientation (or both) of objects for manipulation; and (5) axis-orientation-selective (AOS) and surface-orientation-selective (SOS) neurons in the caudal intraparietal sulcus (cIPS) sensitive to binocular disparity and representing the 3-D orientation of the longitudinal axes and flat surfaces, respectively. Some AOS and SOS neurons are selective in both orientation and shape. Thus the dorsal visual pathway is divided into at least two subsystems, V5A, PP and VIP areas for motion vision and V6, LIP and cIPS areas for coding position and 3-D features. The cIPS sends the signals of 3-D features of objects to the AIP area, which is reciprocally connected to the ventral premotor (F5) area and plays an essential role in matching hand orientation and shaping with 3-D objects for manipulation.