Neuroimaging of cognitive functions in human parietal cortex

Functional neuroimaging has proven highly valuable in mapping human sensory regions, particularly visual areas in occipital cortex. Recent evidence su ggests that human parietal cortex may also consist of numerous specialized subregions similar to those reported in neurophysiological studies of non-h uman primates. However, parietal activation generalizes across a wide varie ty of cognitive tasks and the extension of human brain mapping into higher- order 'association cortex' may prove to be a challenge.