PMID- 20637619
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20101126
LR  - 20161125
IS  - 1879-0445 (Electronic)
IS  - 0960-9822 (Linking)
VI  - 20
IP  - 14
DP  - 2010 Jul 27
TI  - The posterior parietal cortex remaps touch into external space.
PG  - 1304-9
LID - 10.1016/j.cub.2010.05.063 [doi]
AB  - Localizing tactile events in external space is required for essential functions 
      such as orienting, haptic exploration, and goal-directed action in peripersonal 
      space. In order to map somatosensory input into a spatiotopic representation, 
      information about skin location must be integrated with proprioceptive 
      information about body posture. We investigated the neural bases of this tactile 
      remapping mechanism in humans by disrupting neural activity in the putative human 
      homolog of the monkey ventral intraparietal area (hVIP), within the right 
      posterior parietal cortex (rPPC), which is thought to house external spatial 
      representations. Participants judged the elevation of touches on their (unseen) 
      forearm relative to touches on their face. Arm posture was passively changed 
      along the vertical axis, so that elevation judgments required the use of an 
      external reference frame. Single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) 
      over the rPPC significantly impaired performance compared to a control site 
      (vertex). Crucially, proprioceptive judgments of arm elevation or tactile 
      localization on the skin remained unaffected by rPPC TMS. This selective 
      disruption of tactile remapping suggests a distinct computational process 
      dissociable from pure proprioceptive and somatosensory localization. Furthermore, 
      this finding highlights the causal role of human PPC, putatively VIP, in 
      remapping touch into external space.
CI  - 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
FAU - Azanon, Elena
AU  - Azanon E
AD  - Departament de Psicologia Basica, Universitat de Barcelona, 08035 Barcelona, 
      Spain.
FAU - Longo, Matthew R
AU  - Longo MR
FAU - Soto-Faraco, Salvador
AU  - Soto-Faraco S
FAU - Haggard, Patrick
AU  - Haggard P
LA  - eng
GR  - BB/D009529/1/Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council/United 
      Kingdom
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
DEP - 20100715
PL  - England
TA  - Curr Biol
JT  - Current biology : CB
JID - 9107782
SB  - IM
CIN - Curr Biol. 2010 Jul 27;20(14):R604-6. PMID: 20656204
MH  - Afferent Pathways/physiology
MH  - Animals
MH  - Bayes Theorem
MH  - Brain Mapping
MH  - Haplorhini/*physiology
MH  - Humans
MH  - *Models, Neurological
MH  - Models, Statistical
MH  - Physical Stimulation
MH  - *Skin Physiological Phenomena
MH  - Space Perception/*physiology
MH  - Touch Perception/*physiology
EDAT- 2010/07/20 06:00
MHDA- 2010/12/14 06:00
CRDT- 2010/07/20 06:00
PHST- 2010/03/18 00:00 [received]
PHST- 2010/05/18 00:00 [revised]
PHST- 2010/05/19 00:00 [accepted]
PHST- 2010/07/20 06:00 [entrez]
PHST- 2010/07/20 06:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2010/12/14 06:00 [medline]
AID - S0960-9822(10)00712-8 [pii]
AID - 10.1016/j.cub.2010.05.063 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - Curr Biol. 2010 Jul 27;20(14):1304-9. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2010.05.063. Epub 2010 
      Jul 15.