Researchers map human brain's spatial centers

17 Jun 2002

A region of the brain believed important for maintaining the calibration between visual and motor systems necessary for accurate eye-hand coordination has been identified in human subjects, report researchers from Emory University and the University of California, Los Angeles, in the recent issue of Nature.

The subjects were attempting to recalibrate their reaching to compensate for visual displacements that resulted from viewing the world through prism goggles. The brain region was located within a specialized area of posterior parietal cortex (area PEG) in the hemisphere opposite the reaching hand."Presumably, recalibration of eye-hand coordination takes place continuously throughout our lives, as our limbs and visual systems grow and age, and as we learn to deal with commonplace sensory distortions such as using a mirror to guide certain movements or adjusting to the minor spatial distortions caused by a new pair of glasses," says senior author Garrett E. Alexander, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Neurology at the Emory University School of Medicine.