page_title: Visual memory
section_title: Posterior parietal cortex
hierarchical_section_title: Visual memory / Neuroanatomy / Posterior parietal cortex
caption_attribution_description: A picture of the posterior parietal lobe
context_page_description: Visual memory describes the relationship between perceptual processing and the encoding, storage and retrieval of the resulting neural representations. Visual memory occurs over a broad time range spanning from eye movements to years in order to visually navigate to a previously visited location. Visual memory is a form of memory which preserves some characteristics of our senses pertaining to visual experience. We are able to place in memory visual information which resembles objects, places, animals or people in a mental image. The experience of visual memory is also referred to as the mind's eye through which we can retrieve from our memory a mental image of original objects, places, animals or people. Visual memory is one of several cognitive systems, which are all interconnected parts that combine to form the human memory. Types of palinopsia, the persistence or recurrence of a visual image after the stimulus has been removed, is a dysfunction of visual memory.
context_section_description: The posterior parietal cortex is a portion of the parietal lobe, which manipulates mental images, and integrates sensory and motor portions of the brain.
  A majority of experiments highlights a role of human posterior parietal cortex in visual working memory and attention. We therefore have to establish a clear separation of visual memory and attention from processes related to the planning of goal-directed motor behaviors.
  We can only hold in mind a minute fraction of the visual scene. These mental representations are stored in visual short-term memory. Activity in the posterior parietal cortex is tightly correlated with the limited amount of scene information that can be stored in visual short-term memory. These results suggest that the posterior parietal cortex is a key neural locus of our impoverished mental representation of the visual world.
  The posterior cortex might act as a capacity-limited store for the representation of the visual scene, the frontal/prefrontal cortex might be necessary for the consolidation and/or maintenance of this store, especially during extended retention intervals.
caption: Posterior parietal cortex (light green) is shown at the posterior area of the parietal lobe
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