Thus, coordinate transformation for visually guided eye and/or hand movement during reaching could emerge in the operations of the parietofrontal segment of the network, while the frontoparietal connections, by providing information about the sensory consequences of motor plans, might contribute to the composition of forward models

of movement. In conclusion, the functional architecture of the selleck products parietofrontal network as described in monkey studies, and its similarity with that of man derived from fMRI and tractography analysis, provides a reasonable background to attempt an explanation of some of the disorders of parietal patients from a neurophysiological perspective. Among the cognitive–motor disorders of parietal patients we will consider optic ataxia, directional hypokinesia and constructional apraxia. Optic ataxia is mostly observed after lesions of the SPL and adjacent areas of the IPS (Perenin & Vighetto, 1988), including the parieto-occipital junction (Karnath & Perenin, 2005). The hallmark of optic ataxia is misreaching, i.e. errors of hand movement end-point occurring mostly in the peripheral visual field, but also in central vision when reaches

are made in the absence of visual feedback (for reviews see Battaglia-Mayer & Caminiti, 2002;

Rossetti Selleck Veliparib et al., 2003; Battaglia-Mayer et al., 2006a). More recently, slowness of both arrest and directional corrections of hand movement (Pisella et al., 2000), as well as the inability to smoothly update hand movement trajectory (Gréa et al., 2002), have been reported in a case of an optic ataxia patient, when a sudden jump of Thymidylate synthase target location in space occurs. Under these conditions, patients make two distinct movements, one to the first and the other to the second target’s location, whereas normal subjects smoothly correct hand trajectory in-flight. In normal subjects reversible inactivation of PPC through transcranial magnetic stimulation affects the accuracy of hand movement trajectory (Desmurget et al., 1999; Johnson & Haggard, 2005) and prevents adaptation to new dynamics when the movement is made in a velocity-dependent force field (Della-Maggiore et al., 2004). In essence, the main feature of optic ataxia seems to be a disordered composition and control of directional hand movements to visual targets, although an impaired use of proprioceptive information has also been reported (Blangero et al., 2007) in these patients. Based on a case report (Pisella et al., 2000; Gréa et al., 2002) it has been claimed (Rossetti et al.