Superior parietal lobule at a glance
- What it is
- The superior parietal lobule is a parietal association area above the intraparietal sulcus.
- Location
- It lies in the posterior parietal lobe, above the intraparietal sulcus and behind the postcentral gyrus (Brodmann areas 5 and 7).
- Function
- It integrates somatosensory and visual information to represent space and guide movements of the limbs, and takes part in spatial attention.
- Body system
- Nervous · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA72672 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Part of the dorsal visual stream.
- It is bounded in front by the postcentral sulcus and on the medial surface continues as the precuneus.
- It is supplied mainly by the anterior cerebral artery medially and the middle cerebral artery laterally.
Clinical relevance
Damage can cause optic ataxia (inaccurate visually guided reaching). Hemispatial neglect is more typical of right inferior parietal lesions.
Structures next to the superior parietal lobule
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Medial occipital artery · cardiovascular
- Angular gyrus · nervous
- Occipital lobe · nervous
- Postcentral gyrus · nervous
- Parietal bone · skeletal
- Supramarginal gyrus · nervous
- Precentral gyrus · nervous
- Lateral ventricle · nervous
- Occipital bone · skeletal
- Posterior part of superior temporal gyrus · nervous
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Superior parietal lobule (FMA72672). EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service.
- OpenStax. Anatomy and Physiology 2e, §12.1 Basic Structure and Function of the Nervous System. Rice University, 2022.
- Mitsuhashi N. et al. (2009). BodyParts3D: 3D structure database for anatomical concepts. Nucleic Acids Research 37, D782–D785. Data © The Database Center for Life Science, CC BY 4.0.
Related anatomy
Explore the whole body in the interactive 3D human anatomy model, or browse the A–Z list of human structures.