Parietal Lobe
Parietal Lobe - One of the two parietal lobes of the brain located behind the frontal lobe at the top of the brain.
Parietal Lobe, Right - Damage to this area can cause visuo-spatial deficits (e.g., the patient may have difficulty finding their way around new, or even familiar, places).
Parietal Lobe, Left - Damage to this area may disrupt a patient's ability to understand spoken and/or written language.
The parietal lobes contain the primary sensory cortex which controls sensation (touch, pressure). Behind the primary sensory cortex is a large association area that controls fine sensation (judgment of texture, weight, size, shape).
Bi-lateral damage (large lesions to both sides) can cause "Balint's Syndrome," a visual attention and motor syndrome. This is characterized by the inability to voluntarily control the gaze (ocular apraxia), inability to integrate components of a visual scene (simultanagnosia), and the inability to accurately reach for an object with visual guidance (optic ataxia) (Westmoreland et al., 1994).
Special deficits (primarily to memory and personality) can occur if there is damage to the area between the parietal and temporal lobes.
Left parietal-temporal lesions can effect verbal memory and the ability to recall strings of digits (Warrington & Weiskrantz, 1977). The right parietal-temporal lobe is concerned with non-verbal memory.
Right parietal-temporal lesions can produce significant changes in personality.
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