This article requires a subscription to view the full text. If you have a subscription you may use the login form below to view the article. Access to this article can also be purchased.
Abstract
Background: Mental spatial transformations are ubiquitous and necessary for everyday spatial cognition, such as packing luggage into a car or repairing a broken vase. The posterior parietal cortex is known to be involved in performing such transformations.
Objective: To measure reorganization after lesioning of posterior parietal cortex areas subserving spatial transformation.
Method: Brain activity in a patient who underwent a resection of right parietal cortex to manage intractable epilepsy was measured using fMRI while he performed a set of spatial transformation tasks. These data were compared with data from a group of healthy control subjects.
Results: During spatial transformations, activity in the regions overlapping the resection was reduced in the patient compared with control subjects, but activity in the contralateral cortex was greater than that of control subjects.
Conclusions: After a lesion the left hemisphere can adopt components of spatial reasoning normally subserved by the right hemisphere. This converges with evidence that components of language processing normally subserved by the left hemisphere can be taken over by the right hemisphere, suggesting that plasticity of function in the adult human cortex is a general characteristic.
- Received December 9, 2003.
- Accepted March 17, 2004.
AAN Members
We have changed the login procedure to improve access between AAN.com and the Neurology journals. If you are experiencing issues, please log out of AAN.com and clear history and cookies. (For instructions by browser, please click the instruction pages below). After clearing, choose preferred Journal and select login for AAN Members. You will be redirected to a login page where you can log in with your AAN ID number and password. When you are returned to the Journal, your name should appear at the top right of the page.
AAN Non-Member Subscribers
Purchase access
Letters: Rapid online correspondence
REQUIREMENTS
You must ensure that your Disclosures have been updated within the previous six months. Please go to our Submission Site to add or update your Disclosure information.
Your co-authors must send a completed Publishing Agreement Form to Neurology Staff (not necessary for the lead/corresponding author as the form below will suffice) before you upload your comment.
If you are responding to a comment that was written about an article you originally authored:
You (and co-authors) do not need to fill out forms or check disclosures as author forms are still valid
and apply to letter.
Submission specifications:
- Submissions must be < 200 words with < 5 references. Reference 1 must be the article on which you are commenting.
- Submissions should not have more than 5 authors. (Exception: original author replies can include all original authors of the article)
- Submit only on articles published within 6 months of issue date.
- Do not be redundant. Read any comments already posted on the article prior to submission.
- Submitted comments are subject to editing and editor review prior to posting.
