My laboratory studies how an object's location in space is represented in the cerebral cortex and how that information may be used to guide eye and arm movements. Parietal cortex provides an earlier link in the transformation of visual sensory information into motor commands. Patients with unilateral parietal damage may ignore objects in one half of the world. In severe cases, they may clothe only half of their body or eat from only half of their plate.
Spatial memory is affected, and there are often motor deficits as well.
We record from individual neurons in the parietal cortex of macaque monkeys during complex tasks in order to understand the role of the cortex in the sensory-motor transformation. We ask how the locations of these spots are represented by neural activity in the brain. Vision Research 40, 1433-1441, 2000. Saccade-related activity in the parietal reach region. Journal of Neurophysiology 83, 1099-1102, 2000.