How to Build Parietal Lobes

The parietal lobe lies behind the central sulcus, a markedly deep neural fissure separating the touchy-feely somatosensory cortices of parietal lobes from the action-based activity of the frontal lobes. This demarcation provides a useful anatomical landmark, but adjacent though circumscribed sensory and motor regions are physically intimate systems. This is essential to create the fluid synergy between sensation and movement (see Chap. 8). At the gross physiological level, parietal lobes possess visibly distinguishable features and have classically been divided into inferior and superior, and postcentral gyrus. The postcentral gyrus is the sensory strip and receives sensory information from the opposite side of the body. The inferior parietal lobe (BA39 and 40) is bounded by the intraparietal sulcus and includes angular and supramarginal gyri. An area of the supramarginal gyrus within the dominant left hemisphere corresponds to the region conventionally termed Wernicke’s area. Whilst the Wernicke’s label provides a useful fingerprint of a language-sensitive region, it may be time to retire this terminology (for reasons asserted in Chap. 6) and instead acknowledge a language-attuned or -specialised (but not specific) parietal patch.