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The Journal of Neuroscience, March 4, 2009, 29(9):2961-2971; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3211-08.2009

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Multiple Parietal Reach Regions in Humans: Cortical Representations for Visual and Proprioceptive Feedback during On-Line Reaching

Flavia Filimon,^1,3 Jonathan D. Nelson,^2,3,4 Ruey-Song Huang,¹ and Martin I. Sereno^1,5,6

Departments of ¹Cognitive Science and ²Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, ³Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 14195 Berlin, Germany, ⁴Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California 92037, ⁵School of Psychology, Birkbeck College, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom, and ⁶Birkbeck/University College London Neuroimaging Centre, London WC1H 0AP, United Kingdom

Correspondence should be addressed to Flavia Filimon, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Königin-Luise-Strasse 5, 14195 Berlin, Germany. Email: ffilimon{at}cogsci.ucsd.edu

Reaching toward a visual target involves at least two sources of information. One is the visual feedback from the hand as it approaches the target. Another is proprioception from the moving limb, which informs the brain of the location of the hand relative to the target even when the hand is not visible. Where these two sources of information are represented in the human brain is unknown. In the present study, we investigated the cortical representations for reaching with or without visual feedback from the moving hand, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. To identify reach-dominant areas, we compared reaching with saccades. Our results show that a reach-dominant region in the anterior precuneus (aPCu), extending into medial intraparietal sulcus, is equally active in visual and nonvisual reaching. A second region, at the superior end of the parieto-occipital sulcus (sPOS), is more active for visual than for nonvisual reaching. These results suggest that aPCu is a sensorimotor area whose sensory input is primarily proprioceptive, while sPOS is a visuomotor area that receives visual feedback during reaching. In addition to the precuneus, medial, anterior intraparietal, and superior parietal cortex were also activated during both visual and nonvisual reaching, with more anterior areas responding to hand movements only and more posterior areas responding to both hand and eye movements. Our results suggest that cortical networks for reaching are differentially activated depending on the sensory conditions during reaching. This indicates the involvement of multiple parietal reach regions in humans, rather than a single homogenous parietal reach region.

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Received July 8, 2008; revised Jan. 16, 2009; accepted Jan. 26, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to Flavia Filimon, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Königin-Luise-Strasse 5, 14195 Berlin, Germany. Email: ffilimon{at}cogsci.ucsd.edu

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