Understanding the cortical mechanisms of the visual control of movement requires knowledge not only of the functional properties of neurons within different cortical areas, but also of the anatomical relationships among these areas.

In recent years, considerable attention has been devoted to the superior parietal areas, now regarded as the main sources of visual input to the frontal lobe. Very little is known on the anatomical and functional organization of parietal areas located at the parieto-occipital junction. A main research stream of our lab consists of the study of the functional architecture of the parieto-frontal network, performed by combining anatomical and physiological studies. The operations occurring in parietal and frontal cortex may be regarded as potential early and late stages, respectively, of a unique information processing flow leading from vision to movement. The parietal interplay with frontal cortex, and with the many other reach-related regions of parietal cortex can only be based on signals carried by a network of reciprocal association connections, those objectives of study in our laboratory.

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