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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on April 18, 2008
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn046
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Where is a Nose with Respect to a Foot? The Left Posterior Parietal Cortex Processes Spatial Relationships among Body Parts

Corrado Corradi-Dell'Acqua1,2, Maike D. Hesse2,3,4, Raffaella I. Rumiati1 and Gereon R. Fink2,4,5

1 Cognitive Neuroscience Sector, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA-ISAS), 34014 Trieste, Italy, 2 Institute of Neuroscience and Biophysics, Department of Medicine, Research Center Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany, 3 Department of Neurology—Cognitive Neurology, University Hospital Aachen, RWTH Aachen, 52074 Aachen, Germany, 4 Brain Imaging Center West, Research Center Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany, 5 Department of Neurology, University Hospital Cologne, Cologne University, 50924 Cologne, Germany

Address correspondence to Dr. Corrado Corradi-Dell'Acqua. Cognitive Neuroscience Sector, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA/ISAS), via Beirut 2-4, 34014 Trieste, Italy. Email: corradi{at}sissa.it.

Neuropsychological studies suggest that patients with left parietal lesions may show impaired localization of parts of either their own or the examiner's body, despite preserved ability to identify isolated body parts. This deficit, called autotopagnosia, may result from damage to the Body Structural Description (BSD), a representation which codes spatial relationships among body parts. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural mechanisms underlying the BSD. Two human body or building parts (factor: STIMULI) were shown to participants who either identified them or evaluated their distance (factor: TASK). The analysis of the interaction between STIMULI and TASK, which isolates the neural mechanism underlying BSD, revealed an activation of left posterior intraparietal sulcus (IPS) when the distance between body parts was evaluated. The results show that the left IPS processes specifically the information about spatial relationships among body parts and thereby suggest that damage to this area may underlie autotopagnosia.

Key Words: autotopagnosia • body schema • body structural description • extrastriate body area • intraparietal sulcus


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