Lobe · one in each half of the brain

Parietal lobe

Your body map and inner GPS: it knows where you are and where everything is.

Open in 3D

The parietal lobe sits at the top and back of your head. It takes in touch, pain, temperature and the feeling of where your arms and legs are, then blends all of that with what you see and hear. This lets you grab a cup without looking, find your way around a room, and even do math. If other brain areas ask "what is that?", the parietal lobe asks "where is it, and how do I reach it?"

Where it is

At the top and back of the head. It sits behind the frontal lobe, above the temporal lobe and in front of the occipital lobe. A deep groove called the central sulcus separates it from the frontal lobe.

What it does

Think of it as an air traffic control tower that keeps your body and everything around it on one live map.

Inside the parietal lobe

• Primary somatosensory cortexYour touch map: every patch of skin has its own spot on this strip.
• Superior parietal lobuleWhere your body meets space: it guides your reach and tracks your limbs.
• Supramarginal gyrusHelps you sound out words, use tools, and tell your feelings from others'.
• Angular gyrus regionA crossroads where sight, sound and touch meet: reading, math and meaning.
• PrecuneusThe brain's hidden inner eye for memories, imagination and your sense of self.

Works with

• Ventral posterior nucleus of the thalamusThis relay station in the thalamus passes touch and body-position signals up to the parietal lobe.
• Primary motor cortexThe motor strip, just across the central groove, uses the parietal body map to aim and adjust your movements.
• Occipital lobeVision flows forward from the occipital lobe into the parietal lobe along the "where and how" pathway.
• Dorsolateral prefrontal cortexTogether they form attention networks that help decide what to focus on.
• Temporal lobeWhere the two lobes meet, sounds, sights and words are stitched together into meaning.

When it goes wrong

For learning only, not medical advice. If you have a health concern, talk to a doctor.

Surprising facts

• In the "rubber hand illusion", you watch a fake hand being stroked while your own hand is stroked at the same time. Many people then feel the fake hand is their own. Brain scans link this to parietal and nearby frontal areas.
• People with neglect, when asked to draw a clock, may squeeze all twelve numbers onto the right half of the face.
• Scientists who studied Albert Einstein's preserved brain reported an unusual shape in his parietal lobes, the area tied to math and spatial thinking. Whether that had anything to do with his genius is still debated.

Where the name comes from

From the Latin "paries", meaning "wall". It lies under the parietal bones, which form the side walls and roof of your skull.

Learn it in a lesson

• The big pictureCerebrum, cerebellum and brainstem. A short guided lesson in 3D.

Sources

1. Physiology, Cerebral Cortex Functions, StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf
2. Neuroanatomy, Cerebral Cortex, StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf
3. How Do Clinical Disorders Affect Attentional Function?, OpenStax, Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience

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