The parietal cortex has long been associated with navigation, but the specific function has been somewhat difficult to pin down. One theory is more sensory and holds that parietal neurons encode path or distance relative to various reference frames in the environment (landmarks, local vs global space, personal distance or path integration). Another theory is more movement oriented, and holds that the parietal cortex encodes the procedural parts of navigation - the volitional ability to move along the given path in a particular context, linking to the behavior and not the environment. It is possible the parietal cortex aligns both - ideothetic and allothetic spatial information? Is it put in register? However, I have yet to see strong evidence for this combination in navigation tasks.
Does anyone have an idea about what exactly are the signal processing mechanisms performed by the parietal cortex during navigation?
Prof. Lüder Deecke, Wien. The very old expert on this is Hugo Liepmann (1863-1925), his papers and books are in German. The contemporary expert on this is Georg Goldenberg Munich. His E-Mail address is: [email protected]
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Georg Goldenberg of course speaks english as well. You can mention my Name if you want.
Best wishes L. Deecke Vienna
We have spent some time thinking about this very question in human navigation. First, we find that the answer will depend heavily on which part of the parietal cortex. If human parietal cortex is analogous to other primates in function, then the different regions within the parietal cortex will have different roles. We consistently find that the superior parietal cortex (which is still broad) is associated with a pretty broad range of behavioral manipulations--sensitive to having to process information over turns. The inferior parietal cortex has been more elusive in understanding its role in navigation, but it has clear involvement in object-based transformations. In short, I don't think we have answered your question with the current data available, but it is an area ripe for work. I suspect that some of the high resolution imaging techniques might help us way in on some of the functional mapping, and then we can start to develop more testable models.
Thank you, it just came to my mind that men are said to be better in navigation (orientation on a map or driving with a road atlas besides one) than women. And the answer is that women are better in talking, so they have a more left hemisphere dominance than men. Floor-Henry conducts from this that there are more women than men in developping schizophrenia, which is a 'left hemispherical disease' (patients hear voices= verbal hallucinations, lamguage, left hemisphere). Ergo men are not so much left hemispherical than women they are less talkative on the average. So they have their weight more than women on the right hemisphere making them better in navigation which has a right hemispherical prepondernace (more boys than girls are dyslexic). So much about Navigation and orientation being located right parietally. Greetings from Vienna! Lüder Deecke
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